SOURCE: An introduction, in The First Day of Spring: Stories and Other Prose by Raymond Knister, University of Toronto Press, 1976, pp. xi-xxvi.

Stevens is an English-born Canadian poet, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, he surveys Knister's short stories, essays, and reviews.

It is tempting to read the facts of Raymond Knister's life as a legend of the romantic artist, the writer whose blossoming career was cut short by early death. The parallel with someone like John Keats is uneasily apparent, particularly when one remembers that Knister wrote a novel My Star Predominant, based on the life of Keats, and shortly before his death Knister's wife reported in the diary she kept at that time that her husband was full of optimism about his future: he said, 'I feel just as Keats did when he said he was just coming into his powers. I feel as though...