Lancelot Press


Lancelot Press was a Canadian publishing company which operated between 1966 and 1997. It specialized in non-fiction titles, many of which were of a regional nature centered on Maritime Canada, in the fields of local history, spirituality and personal memoirs. For many years, Lancelot was one of the very few Maritime publishing companies.
The business was founded by Reverend William Pope, a United Church minister, near Hantsport, Nova Scotia. Responsibilities for its operation were shared with his wife Isabel. Between its founding and wrapping up, it published more than 500 titles. Many well-known writers in the region published with Lancelot, including Douglas How, Bridglal Pachai, Alden Nowlan and Dorothy Perkyns. The poet Margaret Avison published several titles with Lancelot including No Time which won the Governor General's Award for Poetry.
Many Lancelot Press titles remain in print through a publishing arrangement with Nimbus.

Robert Pope Foundation

The Popes wrapped up Lancelot Press in 1997 to focus on a new enterprise, the Robert Pope Foundation. Named for their late son and artist Robert Pope, who died of Hodgkins Lymphoma, the foundation shares his legacy of art which conveyed the artist's impressions of illness and healing from a patient's point of view. His work was published in the book Illness and Healing: Images of Cancer, which is today presented by the Robert Pope Foundation to first-year medical students across Canada. Pope's Illness and Healing was the recipient of the Richardson Award in 1992. In 2012, Pope's work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Selected writers and works published

WriterTitlesYearNotes
Margaret Avisonsunblue
A Kind of Perseverance
No time*
Not Yet but Still
1978
1984
1989
1997
* Winner, Governor General's Award for Poetry
Douglas HowCanada's Mystery Man of High Finance
Night of the Caribou
One Village One War
1986
1988
1995
-
J. E. BelliveauThe Splendid Life of Albert Smith and the Women He Left Behind
Running Far In: The Story of Shediac
The Monctonians
The Monctonians
The headliners: behind the scenes memoirs
"Crackie": the Sumner family business dynasty
1976
1977
1981
1982
1984
1986
-
Allison MitchamOffshore islands of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
Three Remarkable Maritimers
Paradise or Purgatory
Island Keepers
Atlin, the last utopia
Signs of the times
The angora goat: its history, management and diseases
Taku: the heart of North America's last great wilderness
The Best of Abraham Gesner
Poetic voices of the Maritimes: a selection of contemporary poetry
1984
1985
1986
1989
1989
1990
1992
1993
1995
1996

with Stephanie Mitcham Sexton
with Theresia Quigley
Jean VanierImages of love, words of hope
A network of friends, volume one : 1964-1973 : the letters of Jean Vanier to the friends and communities of L'Arche
1991
1992
James CameronAbout Pictonians
More About Pictonians
Still More About Pictonians
1979
1983
1985
-
Watson KirkconnellThe Flavour of Nova Scotia
Designs Upon the Trestle Board
1976
1981
Poetry
non-fiction
Bridglal PachaiMy Africa, My Canada1989-
Alden NowlanNine Micmac Legends1983-
Charles R. SaundersSweat and Soul1990-
Dorothy PerkynsThe Mystery of the Hemlock Ravine
Rachel's Revolution*
The Mastodon Mystery
Peril at Plover Point
Signal Across the Sea
1986
1988
1996
1991
1994
* Co-winner, Billson Award