Arthur Stringer (writer)


Arthur Stringer was a Canadian novelist, screenwriter, and poet who later moved to the United States.
He published 45 works of fiction and 15 other books, in addition to writing filmscripts and articles.

Early life

Stringer was born in Chatham, Ontario. In 1884 the family moved to London, Ontario, where Charles attended London Collegiate Institute. At the Institute he founded and edited a school magazine called Chips. He then attended University College, University of Toronto from 1892 to 1894 and later studied at Oxford University.

Career

Stringer's first book of poetry, Watchers of Twilight and Other Poems, was published in 1894.
In 1895 he worked for the Montreal Herald. At this time he was also publishing in Saturday Night and the Canadian Magazine. In 1898 he got a job with the American Press Association, moved to New York City, and began publishing in The Atlantic and Harper's. His first poem in Harper's, "Remorse", appeared in February 1899. His first novel, The Silver Poppy, came out in 1903. In the same year he bought a farm on the shore of Lake Erie. and married actress Jobyna Howland, known as the original Gibson girl.
They divorced in 1914, and Stringer married his cousin, Margaret Arbuthnott.
In 1921, the Stringers moved to Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, where Arthur Stringer continued to write.
Stringer wrote crime fiction and wilderness adventures, mainly using conventional formulae. He wrote as well in many other genres, from social realism to psychological fiction. He wrote early science fiction novels, The Story Without a Name with Russell Holman, and The Woman Who Couldn't Die.
Much of his writing was for films. Film scripts on which he worked include The Perils Of Pauline, The Hand Of Peril, The House Of Intrigue, Unseeing Eyes, Empty Hands, The Canadian, The Purchase Price, The Lady Fights Back, Buck Benny Rides Again and The Iron Claw.
Stringer remained a resident of New Jersey until his death in 1950, aged 76.

Writing

Fiction

Stringer's crime and adventure stories were later criticized as stereotypical and containing inaccurate representation of Canadian settings. However, his prairie trilogy - Prairie Wife, Prairie Mother, and Prairie Child - has been called "an enduring contribution to Canadian literature." The trilogy uses a diary form to tell the tale of its narrator, a New England socialite who marries a Scots-Canadian farmer.

Poetry

The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature described Stringer's poetry as "undistinguished verse." However, author John Garvin said of his poetry "there is maintained a standard of beauty, depth of feeling, and technical power, which in Canada have had all too little recognition." Garvin also similarly praised Stringer's blank verse drama Sappho in Leucadia.
Stringer's chief claim to poetic fame today rests on his 1914 book, Open Water, the first book by a Canadian poet to use free verse; in its preface he proclaimed that the modernist movement of which he was part was a "natural evolution". Louis Dudek and Michael Gnarowski, who reprinted the Open Water preface in their anthology The Making of Modern Poetry In Canada, remarked on it:
This book must be seen as a turning point in Canadian writing if only for the importance of the ideas advanced by Stringer in his preface. In a carefully presented, extremely well-informed account of traditional verse-making, Stringer pleaded the cause of free verse and created what must now be recognized as an early document of the struggle to free Canadian poetry from the trammels of end-rhyme, and to liberalize its methods and its substance.

Legacy

Stringer was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Western Ontario in 1946.
Stringer is commemorated by Arthur Stringer Public School in London, Ontario, which opened in 1969.
The house in which Stringer lived as a boy in London, Ontario has been preserved as a historic site, Arthur Stringer House.

Publications

Fiction

The following 22 movies were based on fiction by Arthur Stringer: