Philip Child's poetry and fiction will be remembered primarily on the basis of two works, his historical novel, The Village of Souls (1933), and his autobiographical poem. The Victorian House (collected with other verse in 1951). These works, as well as his others, come from a preoccupation with the facts of pain and loss, which grants to his works a quality of emotional richness that compensates for their often pedestrian form.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, in the Victorian house he was to write about, Child came from a comfortable background. His father, William Addison Child, a leading figure in the steel industry, came from New England, while his mother, Elizabeth Helen Harvey Child, was of Anglo-Canadian ancestry. Scenes from his childhood appear in The Victorian House and in his novel of his World War 1 experiences, God's Sparrows (1937).

In 1915 he entered Trinity College, University of Toronto. In 1917 he enlisted in the...