111. May Agnes Fleming — The Midnight Queen with Brian Busby

KIM: Okay, let's just do this. It's gonna be amazing.

AMY: Listeners, if you only knew the comedy of errors that we three have been through already today to even try to start this episode. It is the curse of The Midnight Queen. La Masque is somehow working her voodoo witch magic on us. We have had sound issues. We have had a Zoom app we've had to force quit. We have had the internet go down. We have had miscommunication on the timing. 

KIM: All we need is a natural disaster.

AMY: Yeah. Where's the earthquake? It's coming. We're in L.A. so... Okay. We're ready to get underway now.

KIM: Hey everyone. Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host Amy Helmes.

AMY: With Halloween right around the corner, we thought a scary read was in order for this week.

KIM: So the novel will be featuring today includes a haunted house, a fortune telling witch, a magic cauldron, an evil dwarf, a secret dungeon, midnight murders, a skeleton, and a pile of rotting dead bodies.

AMY: I'm laughing already. Uh, does not sound very ladylike, does it?

KIM: No, but interestingly enough, there are some incredibly compelling female characters in this novel, which also happens to be a really fun page-turner. There are all sorts of terrifying plot twists,

AMY: It's cray-cray, as they would say. First published in 1863, The Midnight Queen was written by May Agnes Fleming, a prolific Canadian author who specialized in churning out these binge-worthy books, making her one of the nation's first best selling authors. 

KIM: And we've got a Canadian literary historian with us today to learn all about her and this entertaining gothic thriller. So screw your courage to the sticking place as we raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music]

 Our guest today is Brian Busby, a literary scholar, writer, editor, and all around bibliophile whose previous books include Character Parts: Who's Really Who in Can Lit, and A Gentleman of Pleasure, which is a biography of the Canadian poet John Glasgow. You can find Brian writing about lots of forgotten authors on his blog, The Dusty Bookcase, and there's also a book compilation of the same name that expounds on many of his reviews of forgotten and neglected literary treasures. He admits to having a not-so-secret crush on today's lost lady. Brian, welcome to the show.

BRIAN: Well, thank you. It's a pleasure and an honor.

AMY: Now that we finally got here, right? Um, so you had reached out to us suggesting that we tackle a Canadian lost lady of lit for our show. I think that was a great idea because when thinking about classic books, there's one Canadian female author that always springs immediately to my mind, and that's Lucy Maud Montgomery, of Anne of Green Gables fame. After that, I'm embarrassed to admit I start to draw a little bit of a blank. Maybe that's the dumb American in me, I don't know. What do you think, Brian? Are Canadian women writers like May Agnes Fleming, who we're gonna be discussing today, are they somehow extra lost or are they just lost to the non-Canadians of the world?

BRIAN: First of all, Amy, there are no dumb Americans here. Uh, I think you're right that Fleming is extra lost. She's lost to Americans, with whom she enjoyed her greatest sales. She's lost to Canadians, to whom she has very much forgotten. Those who are aware of Fleming perhaps have not given her the acknowledgement she deserves because as you mentioned, she was one of the country's first best selling novelists. In fact, she was certainly the highest paid and the most widely read. 

AMY: We also failed to mention when introducing you, Brian, that you had a brief stint as a soap opera writer early on in your career. And I, myself, was an editor at a soap fan magazine for many years. And the reason I bring this up is because I think this book, The Midnight Queen, has a lot of classic soapy elements, which we will be getting into. What's your take? I mean, based on the other books you've read by Fleming, would you say that that flare for the dramatic is evident in all her novels?

BRIAN: Oh, very much so. And we see a lot of the elements we would see in soaps of, you know, the idea of twins. In this case it's triplets who are nearly identical, and the evil character versus the good character. And, um, an cintricacy of plot, which is almost unavoidable if you're going to be writing a soap opera where you have to keep every single strand interesting. She probably was influenced by Dickens and Wilkie Collins and popular writers of that era. In her own time there was something called the story papers, and we know for a fact that she gobbled those up. Um, these were American weeklys typically of no more than eight pages, and they published short stories and serial novels, and with hugely popular print runs of hundreds of thousand. So essentially, I often think of them as an equivalent of soaps. A 19th century equivalent.

KIM: I wish we could bring back the serial papers and have people reading these and discussing them in the same way. That would be so cool. Um, I guess we just now have the internet, sadly. Anyway.

BRIAN: I wish we could bring back the story papers if only because they paid so well.

KIM: Oh yeah, that's true too. Yeah. Good pay for writers. Um, so we know that Fleming was born May Agnes Early in 1840 in New Brunswick, Canada. New Brunswick borders Maine and is not far from Prince Edward Island, where we know L.M. Montgomery would grow up a few decades later. What else can you tell us, Brian, if anything, about her youth and her family?

BRIAN: Well, Fleming was born in a port city called St. John on the Bay of Fundy. It's roughly about 300 kilometers south of Prince Edward Island. What brought the Fleming family there, her parents immigrated from Ireland, was her father John's work. He was a ship's carpenter and together John and his wife Mary had six children, though May and her brother James, were the only ones to survive. And so James, being 14 years younger, it's almost as if she was raised as an only child for much of her youth. What I find interesting and very impressive about her parents is that they really invested in their daughter's education. We know, for example, May's mother Mary could not read or write. As a matter of fact, there are petitions in which her name is just marked as an X with the note that whatever she was signing had been explained to her. But May herself was highly educated, especially for the time. She attended a place called The Convent of the Sacred Heart, and it was a really remarkable and well respected institution where she studied English and French arithmetic, logic, philosophy, music, art, and of course needle work and embroidery.

AMY: Of course

KIM: You gotta have that. Yeah. 

BRIAN: And in an interview that she gave in 1878, she said that her earliest short stories took the form of fairy tales, which she would tell the other girls, adding that they didn't quite appreciate them as much as she would've liked. She suggested that it was this lack of appreciation that had her turn to the pen.

AMY: Maybe it's good to have a critical audience right off the bat. You know, you have to really hone your skills at that point. 

KIM: Work for it, yeah.

AMY: Okay, so what do we know about her early writing and how she got her start in terms of her career?

BRIAN: Well, she got her start when she was a student. She wrote a story called “The Last of the Mountjoys,” which, uh, she sent off to The New York Mercury, which was one of the biggest story papers of the day. It ended up being her first published story. She ended up, on top of that, being a frequent contributor to The Mercury. And not just The Mercury, but at least three other story papers were going at the same time. And, um, remarkably in the midst of all this activity, at 17, she accepted a teaching position at a school that she resigned two years later to devote herself full time to writing. It's amazing to think that her career took flight before she turned 20. Early works were published under, the nom de plume Cousin May Carlton. And she published at least five short stories in 1859 and six and 1860. And then in 1861, she turned to novels. That year, she published 3. In 1862 she published two novels. 1863, she published two novels, including The Midnight Queen, and then in 1864, for the first time, we have something published under her own name, which was then Miss M.A. Early.

KIM: I mean, wow. She wrote a lot and fast. It's impressive. 

AMY: Yeah. Churning them out. Yeah. Okay. So then we know that ., she married a machinist named John Fleming, but he was not the greatest catch right?

BRIAN: Yeah, you know, I should mention that the two novels she published the year before she married Fleming, one of them is called A Wife's Tragedy. And then that same year, again before the marriage, she published The Twin Sisters or The Wrong Wives Hate. Then we get further novels like The Unseen Bridegroom, or Wedded for a Week, A Leap in the Dark or…

KIM: Wedded for a Week! I love that.

BRIAN: Well, my, my favorite is A Leap in the Dark or Wedded Yet no Wife

KIM: These sound really tabloidy. I love it.

BRIAN: Oh, they're great titles. We get another one called A Mad Marriage. So it's kind of funny because before and after her marriage, the whole idea of matrimony is fraught with problems and tragedy and disaster. Anyway, she married her husband, John Fleming, at the age of 24. And he was a year younger than her. They'd known each other for only three weeks. He was a boilermaker, so he made nowhere near as much money as she did. They ended up living next door to May's parents. Uh, so at two years into the marriage, she gave birth to the first of the couple's four children.

AMY: Okay, so she's the breadwinner in the family, clearly. Uh, I read somewhere that she was earning about $50 a story, which would be the equivalent of about $850 in today's money. 

BRIAN: I mean, if anything, as Fleming scholarship goes along at a snail's pace, we're learning how much money she really did earn, and that income has certainly been downplayed. In, um, 1868, for example, she signed a contract with Philadelphia Saturday Night, which was another story paper, to provide three short stories per annum at $2,000, which amounts to nearly $42,000. And again, that's for three short stories.

KIM: Oh my God. I'll take that contract now. Give it to me. 

BRIAN: Hell, I'll do it for 2000!

KIM: I know.

BRIAN: So in 1870, her annual writing income is thought to have been well over a quarter of million dollars in today's money. And then she became an author for The New York Weekly, for which she was paid the equivalent of $350,000 for serialization rights alone to two novels. And , then in, um, 1875 to move closer to her publishers, she relocated the family to Brooklyn. She purchased a house, and then shortly after, a much larger house. Her husband lived in the first, but not the second. Uh, 10 years in their marriage was pretty much over.

KIM: Wow. She is a real financial success story for writers and women. I mean, especially in her time, but even today. 

AMY: I know, and again, it goes back to, this is crazy that this is a name nobody knows.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. So let's start diving into The Midnight Queen. When I started reading it, I texted Amy who had already read it. I was like, "This is an Alexander Dumas fever dream." Like, I was just completely into it. I felt like the swashbuckling element, all of that. But then it just gets crazier and crazier. Amy, do you wanna give our listeners a brief setup in terms of the plot without spoiling too much? 

AMY: Okay, sure. So the book takes place over the course of a single night. It's London 1665, which is the year of the plague. We've got two handsome young men, Sir Norman Kingsley and Malcolm Ormiston. They are roaming the streets, ribbing each other about their love lives, as you do when bodies are dropping like flies all over the place, I dunno. Um, but Sir Norman Kingsley is giving Ormiston a really hard time because he has fallen insensibly in love with La Masque. This sorceress woman who as her name implies, is never seen without her mask. So Ormiston's like, "She's incredible. You just, you have to meet her, Sir Norman. Maybe she can give you a prediction about your future." So, sure enough, the guy's head over to see La Masque. She stares into her cauldron to give Sir Norman Kingsley his reading, and she winds up making three alarming and kind of incomprehensible assessments about Sir Norman's immediate future. He's a bit unnerved by what she tells him. What follows throughout the course of the rest of the book is that we see these puzzling events sort of fall into place exactly as La Masque has predicted. So you kind of know, as the reader, what's going to happen, you just don't know how or why. And it's all this sort of mysterious puzzle that will fall into place little by little on this dark and scary night.

And I will say this beautiful blonde, Sir Norman, our protagonist, immediately, in the first chapter I had already cast him in my head with a particular Hollywood actor that I'm not gonna name because I don't like to impede my vision on other people's. But needless to say, he is a total charmer. He has so many great one liners and witty retorts, just like any Hollywood hero. And I felt like a moviegoer as I was reading it. So, you know, the sort of comments that you'd scream out , in a theater, you know, like, "Do not go in there! What are you doing?" I was kind of playing that out in my head, and I could also visualize everything so perfectly, especially the dungeon that he eventually goes to. It's like a set designer's dream. She would've been an amazing screenwriter.

BRIAN: Well, she was excellent with dialogue and atmosphere, I think, and her descriptions, as you said.. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. You can picture all of it.

BRIAN: It would really appeal to today's readers, I think, and today's moviegoers in that the females characters, the strong ones, are every bit as strong as the male.

KIM: Yep. Yeah. let's also talk a little bit about how these male characters have so much swagger. It's really interesting because they're love struck. So we're getting to see her depiction of a man who has a big crush, who's besotted. It's really fun to see that as well, right?

AMY: You can see her having fun with it and, poking fun...

KIM: Because it's ridiculous. They're ridiculous. 

AMY: Yeah. I mean, they fall in love with these women based solely on their looks. One literally seems to be suffering from the plague , and he's still in love with her. And like, she can't be looking all that great. And then the other one falls in love with this masked woman. It's like she's the female Phantom of the Opera or something like that. But he just believes in his heart that she must be so beautiful. I, I think she's making fun of it.

BRIAN: Oh, definitely. 

KIM: Yeah. I just love that the two guys are walking around. The plague's happening. It's this crazy night. Um, and they're just like, "Oh, well, we might as well just fall in love at first sight. We all might die anyway, so, let's just go for it." 

BRIAN: I mean, it's funny to think how love struck they are and how much they keep talking to each other about being in love. 

KIM: Mm-hmm. 

BRIAN: And, especially Sir Norman keeps tearing a strip off his friend Ormiston. There's this one scene where, um, uh, well, I'll just, if, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll read this little bit here. Um, he says to Ormiston: 

"When did you see her last?"

Then Ormiston replies "yesterday," with a deep sigh... "and if she were made of granite, she could not be harder to me than she is." 

"So she doesn't care about you then?"

"Not she. She has a little Blenheim dog she loves a thousand times more than she ever will me." 

"Then what an idiot you are to keep haunting her like a shadow. Why don't you be a man and tear out from your heart such a goddess?"

"Ah, that's easily said. But if you were in my place, you would act exactly as I do."

"I don't believe it. It's not me to be mad about anything with a masked face and a marble heart. If I loved any woman, which sadly at the present time, I do not, and she had the taste not to return it, I should take my hat, make her a bow and go directly and love someone else made of flesh and blood instead of cast iron. You know the old song Ormiston, if she be not fair for me, what care I how fair she be?" 

And Ormiston replies, "Kingsley, you know nothing about it, so stop talking nonsense! If you are a cold-blooded. I am not and I love her!"

KIM: You know, it reminds me of Romeo and his buddies, and they're teasing him and everything about falling in love. 

AMY: Yeah, and as a woman reader, it's kind of fun to get to take a glimpse behind the curtain, sort of, of how men... I don't know, Brian, if men really actually do talk this way to each other about women. But it's fun to think that and think that you're a fly on the wall, you know? 

BRIAN: Yeah, it's, it's not locker room talk that we always hear about.

KIM: No, it’s not. 

BRIAN: It really isn't.

AMY: So, we've all been living in the Covid era long enough that we're thankfully no longer triggered to read about a plague. I don't know if a year and a half ago I could have done it. Um, any ideas what could have sparked a story like this one for her? Or was it just a wild imagination?

BRIAN: I think, being a work of historical fiction, The Midnight Queen is unusual and nearly unique in Flemming's bibliography. She does play around a bit with time in this story, um, and other stories, her early stories and novels are all set in England. Her first short story, the one that she sold at the age of 15, “The Last of the Mountjoys” is subtitled, “A Tale of the Days of Queen Elizabeth.” And she studied English history as a lot of people in New Brunswick would've done at the time. so she was inspired by that, Excuse me. [coughs]

KIM: Speaking of Covid

BRIAN: Yeah, 

KIM: Anyway.

BRIAN: Well, I was about to say 1665 was, as I said, the plague year and, um, the Lord Mayor's decision to smoke away the pest with bonfires did in fact take place, but not in June, which is time that this takes place in The Midnight Queen. They actually took place in September and they weren't doused immediately by rain as they are in the novel, although they were doused about three days later by rain.

AMY: It definitely helped set the mood I think. She said the sky turned "from black to blood crimson red," you know, because of all these fires that we're burning. So it's just...

KIM: it adds to the drama. Yeah. Yeah. And the life or death thing makes it even more exciting, obviously. Um, so speaking of exciting, um, we talked about serialization earlier. Was this also serialized? I can imagine people sitting around reading it aloud, waiting for the next installment. It's really that kind of cliffhanger type story, and there's constant cliff hangers.

BRIAN: Definitely. It was serialized both in the United States and England, and most of her money came from the story papers rather than book sales, although she'd made a very good living from book sales. But the story papers, you know, the much-missed story papers, paid so well.

AMY: Yeah, and those story papers are like our Netflix, right? I mean, that's what you would do for entertainment. As a quick aside here, while I was reading The Midnight Queen, I wanted to introduce my daughter Julia, to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which I had watched when it first came out. And so we started watching that and it struck me this novel is full on "Buffy." Brian, I don't know if you ever watched that series, but there is so much in terms of the tone. The comedy mixed with the glamorous vampires who are just snarky to each other. You're nervous and you sense the danger, but you're also laughing at these villainous characters. It's so good. Kim, did you ever watch it?

KIM: I did. And it does remind me of that same vibe of, um, ironic humor with darkness as well.

AMY: I just wanna check my notes really quick because there was a part that so made me laugh, too. I might have to paraphrase it because I don't know if I can find it. 

KIM: While you're looking I love the part where he falls into a building and lands on his feet. 

AMY: That's it! That's what I was going to say!

KIM: Oh, that's why you're gonna look. Oh my God. Our minds are so alike! I love it too! God. I can't believe you were looking for the same thing! 

AMY: He falls through the ceiling of their dungeon and it's like classic movie moment. 

KIM: It's like Errol Flynn or something. 

AMY: Yes. Here, I'm gonna read it. I found it. So he says, "Should you feel my presence here any restraint? I am quite ready and willing to take my departure at any moment. And as I before insinuated, will promise on the honor of a gentleman and a knight never again to take the liberty of tumbling through the ceiling down on your heads."

KIM: just takes a moment and he decides, "Okay, this is the way I'm gonna go with this." And it's so funny. 

BRIAN: I think you're right, Kim. It's very much an Errol Flynn moment, isn't it? 

KIM: Yeah. yeah. Definitely. I can picture it. So, the Midnight Queen of the title is actually a woman residing in this seedy underworld that we're talking about right now in the scene. Her name is Queen Miranda, and she is married to the ruler of this strange enclave. He's a monstrous dwarf aply named Caliban. Yet Miranda is not a shrinking violet. She's actually kind of a badass. Sir Norman isn't quite sure what to make of her when they cross paths because she is so forceful and outspoken. But we later learn the truth about her station in life, and it's kind of horrific. Uh, it's actually not kind of, it is horrific. You could say the same for this other witchy character La Masque that we've talked about. La Masque is incredibly intimidating and powerful, but there's also a real tragicness to her story too, which we won't reveal. So Fleming is portraying these female characters who are strong, yet tortured. What do you think, Brian? Um, is there any subtext that we could read into that in terms of Fleming's own life? Are we reaching or what do you think? Um,

BRIAN: Well, I, I'm not sure we can I say this only because The Midnight Queen was published two years before she married John Fleming, and apart from being a child who saw her siblings die, four of her siblings die, one after another, I don't really see much evidence that she had an unhappy life. Her school life was, by all accounts, very happy. She was almost blessed at very early age with this entre into the world of writing that I think we would all be jealous of at the age of 15. 

AMY: I thought she must have written it after she had married because the husband, Caliban, seemed so awful. But then you're saying it was written before she would've even met him. And that's making me think, "Girl, you should've known better! You, you of all people wrote the book on Don't get involved with a terrible guy!"

BRIAN: And to get married to somebody after knowing them for three weeks, that's probably not a good idea.

AMY: Exactly. Like these dumb male characters. Okay, so we've mentioned kind of the soapiness of the plot. There's the twin trope, or in this case triplets. It's very Shakespearean as well, wouldn't you say?

KIM: Yeah, there's obviously the names Miranda and Caliban that are from “The Tempest.” La Masque and her cauldron and everything is a little bit like the three witches. We talked about the following and love at first sight is like “Romeo and Juliet,” and a lot of other Shakespeare plays as well. So, yeah. 

AMY: She drops a lot of reference, like she drops in Dickens references in the book. She's definitely showing off her education, and how well-read she is. So, like I said, we're not gonna reveal the ending of the book, but I will say the very last lines, like how she wrapped it up, it made me laugh, in keeping with the rest of the novel. She didn't take any of this too seriously.

KIM: Yeah. If we haven't made it clearer, listeners, this novel is so much fun. have to read it, you really have to read it.

BRIAN: Yeah, I think you're right. She didn't take the ending seriously at all. And I'm spoiling nothing here, it brings into question the whole story as to whether what the narrator shares is true. Did it take place? Because we learn at the very end that this is a story she's been told. You were alluding before to my kind of crush on May Agnes Fleming. Much of that is because the omniscient narrator tends to have the very same voice from novel to novel. And to me it's her, uh, because it just sounds so similar to each novel. It's almost as if she's sitting you down to tell a story. In this case, she's sitting you down to tell a story someone has told her. As we find out at the end, and it's not my favorite ending of a May Agnes Fleming novel because it gets so absurd, but it's, funny.

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Yeah, I did a "Wait, what?" You know, kind of moment, uh, and you're right, she has moments, you know, just between her and the reader throughout the story where she's like, "Oh, reader, and by the way, blah, blah, blah." you know, So there is an intimacy between author and reader because of that. 

KIM: Yeah. And speaking of Fleming, let's get back to her life a little bit. Um, she died in 1880. She was only 39. She had long suffered from Bright's disease. That's an affliction of the kidneys. And in keeping with her strong female protagonist, she actually managed to make one last power play upon her death. Do you want to explain it for our listeners, Brian?

BRIAN: Sure. Um, yeah, she'd been struggling with the disease for at least three years, um, but her death, which was in the March of 1880, was still very much unexpected. As a matter of fact, she'd actually made trip plans to travel the very next month to England for the very first time. So she never visited what had been the setting of so many of her novels. Also, as I think you've alluded to, she was a woman who knew her business and she clearly understood many matters. And, um, remarkably, you know, given the times she lived young, she managed to shut her husband, who was then estranged, out of her will. And more than this, she prevented him in having any control over the children or her writing and, uh, the copyright to her works remained with the children before they lapsed into the public domain.

AMY: I don't know if we really specified why this husband was such a deadbeat.

BRIAN: I've read a couple of times that he was an alcoholic, which seems possible, I guess. There was a lot of pressure he put on her, and I think some jealousy that resulted in making money. He recognized her as somebody who could make a lot more money than he did, and really pushed her to accept contracts. You know, she was writing three, four novels a year. She didn't have to do that. She could have written much less, uh, and been under a lot less pressure. And of course, she was raising children at the same time, which is a remarkable feat on its own. So we don't know exactly what happened there except for the fact that on the one hand, uh, he was pushing her to earn money. And on the other hand, and this is found in a couple of, um, uh, interviews, he began to resent the fact that she was making so much money, that he wasn't the breadwinner. And I think as would've been typical of the time, he would've thought, I control the family purse, right? Because I'm the man . And I don't think he ever controlled the family purse.

AMY: Well, good on her for taking that final stand.

KIM: Yeah.

BRIAN: Yep. 

AMY: Um, and, you know, I went online trying to figure out, because she was so prolific, I tried to really get a tally of the official number of novels that she put out. It was hard for me to come to a concrete number. I don't know if you have a definitive number in terms of the books she published.

BRIAN: I don't think there's a definitive number. Um, Lorraine McMullin has done a lot of research on this, and I think we can say it's something approaching four dozen novels. The challenge comes with the various titles. So we have La Massque and The Midnight Queen, who was originally La Masque or The Midnight Queen, but they've been published under different titles. Uh, after her death, a lot of books were presented as, two different books, one of which being sequel to the first part. So that makes things confusing as well. It's generally thought by people who've read them that her last novels were her best. And one wonders what she would've produced had she lived. She started to slow down her production. Bright's disease obviously would've had an effect on her energy. But, uh, I think also she didn't have that pressure from her husband anymore to produce, produce, produce. And, um, one of the things I find absolutely fascinating is that her very last novel is a book called A Changed Heart. It's the only one that's still in print, from Halifax Publishers. And it was published posthumously. Certainly it's most personal of her novels. It's the only one that takes place entirely in Canada. Uh, in this case, it's a disguised St. John, which was her hometown.

AMY: Mm. Okay. So I know Brian, that you're acquainted with one of our previous guests, Brad Bigelow, of Neglected Books. He recently featured a guest post by Sarah Lonsdale which I found interesting because she argues that sometimes prolific writers are more likely to be forgotten over time. I guess the thinking is, you know, if somebody can churn out that many books so quickly, they can't be all that good. Do you have any thoughts on that or how it might apply to her work and why it's been lost to time a little.

BRIAN: Oh, I think you're right. I think prolific authors tend to be viewed with some suspicion. But in this case, I think there are a few elements that come into play that are particularly Canadian. The first being genre. Um, genre writers tend not to be taken seriously by, let's say, scholars and academics. So we don't study them in school. I mean, in many ways we don't even study Canadian literature in school. Uh, I went all the way through elementary school, high school and college right into university before I was assigned to Canadian novel to read.

KIM: That's shocking. I would not have expected that. Wow. That's so interesting.

BRIAN: I think the other thing that happened with, um, uh, Fleming, and this is also related to the way some academics have cast Canadian literature is that she left. She went to New York. Most of her books are set in England or the United States. And I think that, uh, we see that there's some reluctance to embrace writers who've left. And I say this because I had personal experience several years ago, having, uh, a plaque dedicated to the great, great Montreal short story writer, Mavis Gallant, who I'm sure you're both familiar with. And on the committee that I was part of, there was one person who just didn't want to do it because she left to go to Paris as a young woman, and she stayed in Paris. And there's some sort of resentment from certain Canadian nationalists, I guess you'd say about that.

KIM: Interesting. 

BRIAN: I think she, Fleming, has suffered from that the same way.

AMY: Mmm. 

KIM: So speaking of Canadian authors, while we've got you, can you mention any other lost Canadian women authors? Maybe you'd like to give a shout out too for our listeners.

BRIAN: Okay, I'm gonna limit myself to three. The first is Winfred Eaton, who's sister…

AMY: Oh, yeah. 

BRIAN: .. is Edith Eaton. Yeah, Sui Sin Far.

AMY: Uh, yeah, we did an episode on her and we had questions about Winifred. I remember at the time.

KIM: Yeah. 

BRIAN: Episode 15. I just listened to it again, uh, the other day. 

KIM: Thank you!

BRIAN: Anyway, I, I've long been fascinated by the Eaton family, this huge family with tons of kids, but also we're talking about a 19th century family that was interracial in Montreal, which just would've been very unusual at the time. Edith of course wrote under the name, uh, Sui Sin Far. But her sister, Winifred, wrote under the kind of fake Japanese name Onoto Watanna, and she pretended to be Japanese or half-Japanese, which she kind of felt bad about later in life. If I can recommend one novel, it would be Marion, the Story of an Artist’s Model, which was published a few years ago, or republished by McGill Queens University Press and, uh, I guess the reason that I love it so much is because it's the most biographical of all her, um, all her novels and all her works. Um, I'm trying to remember. Which of you likes true crime?

AMY: That's me.

BRIAN: Yep. Okay. , Uh, in that case, well, Kim, you like this too, but in that case, uh, I recommend, Anne Héber, uh, French Canadian or Quebecois author, who, um, in 1970 published a novel called Kamouraska, which was inspired by the 1838 murder of a wealthy French Canadian by an American doctor who was in love with the French Canadian's wife. It was also made into a film that I think has probably one of the three great Canadian motion pictures. So, um, that one's great. And then I'm gonna plant a flag for my third one. And that is, um, Margaret Millar. I almost said Mller. I used to pronounce her name Miller. It's M I L L A R. She's often mistaken for an American. She, was born and raised in, a southern Ontario in a town called Kitchener. Her father was the mayor of Kitchener at one point. And, um, she's often tied and has been somewhat overshadowed by her husband, whose was Kenneth Miller. Uh, or see I've done it. Kenneth Millar. He's better known as Ross McDonald, who was a very big mystery writer from the forties all the way through until the eighties. So she is best known for a book called, uh, Beast in View, which won the 1956 poll award for best novel, but, well, I was thinking because of the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs V. Jackson, I would recommend her 1950 novel Do Evil in Return, which begins with a protagonist, a female doctor turning away a young woman who's seeking an abortion. It's not one of her best known books, but I think it's just as strong as the ones that are.

KIM: Wow. She sounds incredible. 

AMY: And listeners, will have all of this in our show notes. Um, if you didn't catch all of these titles, we'll make sure to have them. There was the other author too, that you kind of followed up with us, that was about, like, a single mother, who's...

BRIAN: Yes. Uh, The Untempered Wind by Joanna E. Wood, um, she's kind of a recent discovery for me. I'd never read her until this year, and you're right, it's about a single mother, and the way she's treated in small town Ontario, um, an area that's not too far from Niagara Falls. It's a 19th century novel. It's interesting because it really makes a small town seem less than idyllic, and there are a lot of people who are complete hypocrites when it comes to the way she's treated. And I will say, and I, I don't know if I'm getting soft in my old age, but, I will say that, uh, it's the first novel I've read where I actually wept reading the novel.

KIM: Wow. 

BRIAN: One scene that made me cry, which had never happened to me. 

KIM: Okay. I'll have to have a box of Kleenexes 

AMY: All right. Yeah, listeners, I feel like I want to challenge everybody, and I'm going to challenge myself, to reach for more of these Canadian authors. I mean, there's no excuse to not seek these out now that we know some of the names. Brian, thank you so much for joining us to talk about Canadian women and to talk about May Agnes Fleming. This one was a real blast.

KIM: Absolutely. And I'm so glad we made it through without any more glitches, I think 

AMY: I wanna say, but I don't wanna say knock, wood. Yeah, I think the curse is lifted, but we haven't checked the audio yet, so hopefully we don't have to redo this whole thing. Um, but yeah, it was great meeting you.

BRIAN: I loved doing this and, you know, , I'm a great fan. And as my late mother would've said, uh, you're doing God's work. 

AMY: Thank you. 

KIM: Thank you. We are honored to have you as a listener and have you on. That's all for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you loved listening to this episode, please leave us a review wherever you listen. It really means so much to both of us, and it helps new listeners find us as well.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.