SOURCE: "Rereading Richardson's Wacousta," American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, Autumn, 1988, pp. 381-86.

In the following review of the 1987 edition of Wacousta edited by Douglas Cronk, Beasley comments on the publication history of Wacousta and suggests Richardson's sources of inspiration for the novel's chief characters.

In 1965, while I was researching my biography of Richardson, The Canadian Don Quixote, I found a first edition of Wacousta in an antiquarian bookstore in New York City for $17.50. It was a rare three volumes at a low price, but Richardson then was unknown. Now he is regarded as one of Canada's greatest writers, and Wacousta, his most popular novel, as the keystone to Canadian literature. Douglas Cronk, who edited this reissue of the first English edition, was quite right to choose it for rigorous textual analysis. Not only has he restored maturity to the text of the pirated American...