Although Morley Callaghan was a masterful short-story writer, he also won recognition for his many novels, the most highly regarded being Such Is My Beloved (1934), More Joy in Heaven (1937), The Loved and the Lost (1951), and Close to the Sun Again (1977). He is also the author of a novella (No Man’s Meat), a children’s book (Luke Baldwin’s Vow, 1948), and three plays (To Tell the Truth, pr. 1949; Turn Home Again, pr. 1940; and Season of the Witch, pb. 1976). He recorded some of his stories for children, and others, such as Luke Baldwin’s Vow, have been filmed. Starting his career as a journalist, Callaghan contributed articles and essays to newspapers and journals throughout his life. His nonfiction works include the text for a book of John de Visser’s photographs, entitled Winter (1974), and That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Some Others (1963), an entertaining account of the heady days in Paris in 1929, when he socialized with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and other writers. Throughout his life, Callaghan continued to make significant contributions to Canadian cultural life as a book reviewer and essayist as well as a novelist.

In the 1920’s, Morley Callaghan’s stories impressed Ernest Hemingway, who introduced them to Ezra Pound. Pound subsequently printed them in his magazine, The Exile. The stories also impressed F. Scott Fitzgerald, who presented them to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s. Perkins later published Callaghan’s stories as well as some of his novels. Although considered a highly promising writer in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Callaghan neither developed a large audience nor achieved the type of reputation that his works warrant. Edmund Wilson has commented that he is “perhaps the most unjustly neglected novelist in the English-speaking world.” Even so, Callaghan was the recipient of several awards: Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award (1951), the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (1958), the Lorne Pierce Medal (1960), the Canada Council Molson Prize (1970), the Royal Bank of Canada Award (1970), and the Companion of the Order of Canada (1982). He was also nominated for a Nobel Prize. His fiction is praised for its direct, unornamented prose, though later criticism has suggested that his writing is wooden, with technical weaknesses. His fiction is also valued for its sympathetic portrayal of ordinary people and for its honest treatment of the problems of contemporary life. Callaghan’s lifelong exploration of the conflict between spirituality and human weakness and alienation has illuminated the best of his writing.

Callaghan held a D.Litt. from the University of Western Ontario (1965), an LL.D. from the University of Toronto (1966), and a D.Litt. from the University of Windsor (1973). In 1989, the city of Toronto awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Morley Callaghan (KAL-uh-han) built his early reputation as a writer primarily on his short stories, many of which appeared in European and American magazines such as The Transatlantic Review, The Exile, Transition, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, and Scribner’s Magazine. Several significant collections of these stories have been published, including A Native Argosy (1929), Now That April’s Here, and Other Stories (1936), Morley Callaghan’s Stories (1959), and The Lost and Found Stories of Morley Callaghan (1985). In addition to the novels and stories, Callaghan wrote a few plays and published many articles in The Toronto Star, New World, Maclean’s, and Saturday Night. In 1963, he published That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Some Others , a memoir of his early years as a writer in...