Acknowledgements

I must thank my grandmother Beth Fairley, who first passed Edward Taylor Fletcher’s commonplace books to me, her brother Ralph Latham who preserved them, and my aunt and uncle Molly and Hugh Dickey who gave me the few surviving volumes of Fletcher’s library. This book has been a very long time coming, and I am sorry I could not share its arrival with you. I benefited from the comments and thoughts of several audience members at academic conferences, all of whom encouraged this work—some deeply shaped my thinking. Thank you not only for listening to preliminary work on this project and giving much needed encouragement but for contributing to my understanding of it. I also owe a debt to the librarians who gave me their aid and to the libraries in which I wrote and edited: Surrey Libraries and the librarians of the City Centre branch, the McPherson Library of the University of Victoria, the Bennett and Fraser Libraries at Simon Fraser University, the Rutherford Library of the University of Alberta, Library and Archives Canada, University of New Brunswick Libraries, and the Giovatto Library of Fairleigh Dickinson University. Susan Best also first brought Sidney Ashe Fletcher’s unpublished autobiography to my attention and shared her genealogical work on the descendants of Edward Taylor Fletcher’s father, Captain John Fletcher. I also appreciate Isabella Wang’s invitation to read Fletcher’s “Legend of the Isiamagomi” for the Dead Poets Reading series during the early days of the pandemic, an event that made me revise my sense of the affective elements of the work.

I also owe my thanks to students who have read Fletcher’s long poems for my classes, and special gratitude to Apollonia Felicity Elsted, whose interest found expression in an exquisite letterpress edition of The Lost Island, as well as my thanks for the great kindness and insights of her parents, Jan and Crispin Elsted, into Fletcher’s poetics. Thank you, dear barbarians. I also owe Peter Midgley my appreciation for his early support for this book and razor-sharp editorial insights. Several colleagues and friends have also lent me needed encouragement and kindness: Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek for really hearing me, Adam Rudder for making me own this, Charles Sligh for Victorian graces early in the game, and Isabelle Keller-Privat for all things prosody and showing me rue Sainte-Ursule.

I am left amazed by the professional work of the staff of Athabasca University Press, and by the erudition and editorial vision of Pamela Holway, who is as much a partner in this as she is an editor. You have given me not only sound advice with support and sternness as each was needed, but also a model for editorial professionalism and pragmatism. I also extend my gratitude to the blind readers who gave their time and helpful remarks—scholarly publishing would be impossible without them. I may not have reconciled all your visions, but this project is stronger for your having shared them.

Lastly, my family, near and far … My siblings have tolerated my ramblings about Fletcher, my parents awakened and nurtured all these interests, my sons Finlay and Riordan have discovered Fletcher all on their own through secret maps and magical scrolls, and my wife Lindsay has given sound scholarly counsel and much needed assistance with Greek, Latin, and philology.