2001 short list:
The Spinster & The Prophet
by A.B. McKillop
Published by Macfarlane Walter & Ross
On September 30, at The Word On The Street festival, A. B. McKillop was presented with a cheque for $9,000 as the winner of this year's Toronto Book Awards. It was a difficult task to select a winner from the five deserving books on the shortlist, according to the Committee co-chairs John Farrell and Nancy Vanderzwam. "The Spinster & The Prophet is beautifully written, tremendously well researched and lovingly crafted. It is all that a City of Toronto Book Awards winner should be: evocative, literary and wholly unique."
In The Spinster & The Prophet, A.B. McKillop unfolds the parallel stories of two Edwardian figures: H.G. Wells, the celebrated writer of autobiographical fiction and futuristic fantasy and Florence Deeks, a modest teacher and amateur student of history in Toronto. In 1925, Miss Deeks launched a $500,000 lawsuit against Wells, claiming that in an act of "literary piracy"; Wells had somehow come to use her manuscript history of the world in the writing of his international bestseller The Outline of History. Miss Deeks' manuscript was submitted to the venerable Macmillan Company in Canada but was rejected and never published. Wells' manuscript, completed in an astonishingly short period, was released by the same firm in North America the year following.
As the mystery deepens and new evidence is revealed, it seems that the verdict of the courts in Deeks vs Wells may not be that of history. In this riveting literary whodunit, McKillop tells the extraordinary story of one of the most sensational cases in Canadian publishing and legal history.
Professor of history at Carleton University, A.B. McKillop is one of Canada's leading historians of ideas. He is the award-winning author of several previously published scholarly works on the history of religion and higher education. His writings have covered the subjects of philosophy, religion, education, science and composer Stephen Sondheim's musicals. He lives in Ottawa. The Spinster & The Prophet was nominated for the 2000 Governor General's Award and a finalist for both the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime.
A.B. McKillop, winner of the 2001 Toronto Book Awards for his historical non-fiction The Spinster & The Prophet, published by Macfarlane Walter & Ross
The Spinster & The Prophet - excerpt
The growing pile of neat transcript on the dining room table testified to the importance of this history. The whole family had become interested in what Florence was doing. It made Mabel recall table talk back in Morrisburg about the Loyalists and their grandfather and Wellington. Her father had always taken a special interest in history. Even Mother and George now asked about Florence's book, questioning her when she was not busy with her "plan."
It had often been difficult to carry on much of a family conversation while George's children were around. And what a handful they were: ten-year-old George – called by his middle name, Campbell –- was reserved, like his father: but Douglas, eight, and little Edward, six, seemed cut from a bolder and less predictable pattern. Once the little ones were put to bed, however, conversation shifted from the news of the recent Canadian victory at Vimy, and they all turned to Florence and the tales she had gleaned from the past. It had been difficult for the others to keep a straight face when she told them about how Frederick William of Brandenburg – or was it Prussia? – would approach women he met in the streets, brandishing his cane and ordering them back into their houses and telling them indignantly that George Jeffrey's, chief justice under Stuarts, known as the "hanging judge," had sentenced women to be burned to death merely for giving food and shelter to the Puritan rebels. Florence had acquired such a stock of these stories!
Everyone marvelled at Florence's single-minded dedication and the sacrifices she had made, even Helen, who usually remained detached from her sister-in-law's enthusiasm. Shortly after she started going to the library Florence had given up almost all her other activities. She had resigned as a recording secretary of the Toronto Woman's Liberal Club, much to Mother's initial chagrin, and had even stopped going to the Woman's Art Association. The history consumed all her energy, and Mabel was amazed that, with the drain of war, her sister still had so much of it in reserve.
Sometimes Annie helped with the typing, for she had clerical skills. Usually, though, it was Florence at the Remington, pounding each day's writing into presentable text. And when not doing that, she was often at the small desk in her upstairs bedroom, sorting through her piles of books and sheaves of notes, adding to her "plan." It occurred to Mabel that her sister was engaged in her own private war – one of ideas and words fought against the attitudes and deeds of men through the ages. It tickled Mabel's fancy: a little war fought in a public library and in a woman's modest home on Farnham Avenue.
