SOURCE: An introduction to The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories by Sinclair Ross, McClelland and Stewart, 1968, pp. 7-12.

Laurence was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist, editor, and translator. She is considered a prominent figure in contemporary Canadian literature. In the essay, she acknowledges Ross as an early influence upon her work and describes his style as "spare, lean, and honest. "

Although Sinclair Ross's stories and two novels have appeared over a period of some twenty-five years, most of his writing has been done out of the background of the prairie drought and depression of the Thirties, and as a chronicler of that era, he stands in a class by himself. When I first read his extraordinary and moving novel, As For Me And My House, at about the age of eighteen, it had an enormous impact on me, for it seemed the only completely...