Both as a writer and a critic Frederick Philip Grove stands at the beginning of modern literature in Canada. In his comprehensive body of work--novels, autobiographical writings, short stories, and letters and essays on literature, culture, and society--Grove breaks away from the literary conventions governing Canada's colonial century. With his emphasis on pioneer characters and prairie settings Grove writes within the tradition of realism, but his psychological and social observations are placed in a framework of ideas that is strongly influenced by the aesthetic and philosophical movements of fin-de-siècle Europe. Grove's uncompromising seriousness about the moral function of literature is remarkable.

For a long time Grove's early life was shrouded in mystery. Since the publication, in 1973, of Douglas O. Spettigue's FPG: The European Years there is little doubt that "Frederick Philip Grove" is the Canadian pseudonym of the German writer Felix Paul Berthold Friedrich Greve, although...