SOURCE: Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. “I. V. Crawford's Prose Fiction.” Canadian Literature, no. 81 (summer 1979): 47-58.

In the following essay, Ross analyzes Crawford's fiction, primarily stories written for magazines and incomplete works.

Crawford's literary reputation will be based, as she expected it would, upon her poetry and especially upon her verse narratives. She undoubtedly saw herself as a poet who must interrupt her real work long enough to write popular romances for money. There is, nevertheless, a continuity in her work that gives the prose its special interest. In the poetry and prose alike, her characteristic mode of perception is romance. Consistently she sees experience in patterns provided by myths and fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty, the spring maiden who is pricked by the thorn of winter and sleeps in a trance until the bright Solar hero comes to drive away the chill mists—Sleeping Beauty lies behind both Brynhild in...