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The Flying Years

出版	Independently Published, 2018-02-15
主題	Fiction / Short Stories (single author)
ISBN	19803028209781980302827
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=N1EJtwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Frederick Niven was British Columbia's first professional man of letters and the first significant literary figure of the Kootenays. He lived by his wits, as an independent writer, mainly on the outskirts of Nelson, from 1920 until 1944. Although some of his more than 40 titles were written to keep the wolf from the door, such as Cinderella of Skookum Creek (1916), by contrast, Niven's collection of 16 short stories called Above Your Heads (1911) consisted exclusively of stories rejected by editors who believed their content would be "over the heads" of readers.Born to Scottish parents in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1878, Frederick Niven was raised in Glasgow, from age five. At age 20, Niven was sent to the dry B.C. Interior for treatment of a lung ailment. He trekked throughout the Okanagan Valley and Kootenays, then worked at the Hastings Sawmill in Vancouver in 1900. After returning to Scotland, he began publishing travel accounts in newspapers and magazines. His first novel, The Lost Cabin Mine (1908), was a forgettable potboiler set in the Canadian west. After marrying Mary Pauline Thorne-Quelch in 1911, he returned to western Canada on commissions as a freelance writer. Rejected for military service, Niven wrote for the British Ministry of Information during WWI. After three more novels, he was threatened with a serious heart ailment and moved to Willow Point, six miles outside of Nelson, B.C., in 1920. Two of Niven's historical novels, The Flying Years (1935) and Mine Inheritance (1940), are set on the prairies, but most of his work is set in either Scotland or British Columbia. In his final novel, The Transplanted (1944), Niven depicts the rise of B.C.'s interior ranching, lumbering and mining industries and their effects on a broad range of characters. Two transplanted men from Glasgow, Robert Wallace and Jock Galbraith, maintain a strong bond despite difficulties. Robert Wallace is a shrewd visionary who becomes a builder of Canada, opening up the town of Elkhorn.Historian and critic Charles Lillard's favourite Niven novel, Wild Honey (1927), is actually a fictionalized memoir, a work of hobo literature, a precursor to the sensibilities of B.C. writers such as Al Purdy, Patrick Lane and Jim Christy. The narrator meets two hobos, Slim and Hank, who work with him at a gravel pit near Savona. Niven writes, "Above the rasp of the shovels with which we worked astern of the big, rhythmically-coughing steamshovel, I would hear the murmur of the Thompson River lapsing past; and that murmur, somehow, was worth much weary labour to hear." The threesome cash their pay cheques at North Bend, then wander south to border towns below Kamloops. Long out of print, Wild Honey offers some splendid writing, akin to that of Jack London or George Orwell--directly based on Niven's own travels. Lillard named it one of the three best early B.C. novels, along with Hubert Evans' Mist on the River and Howard O'Hagan's Tay John.Niven died of a heart attack in 1944. He remains an under-recognized as one of Canada's first "non-colonial" authors.FULL ENTRY:Frederick Niven was a trailblazer, British Columbia's first 'man of letters.' He lived by his wits, as an independent writer, mainly in the Kootenays, from 1920 until 1944. Some of his than forty books were literary; other titles, such as Cinderella of Skookum Creek (1916), kept the wolf from the door. In contrast, his collection of sixteen short stories called Above Your Heads (1911) consisted exclusively of stories that were rejected by editors who believed their content would "over the heads" of readers.