Growing Pains
by Emily Carr
On This Page
Description
This autobiography by Emily has been called "probably the finest... in a literary sense, ever written in Canada."Completed just before Emily Carr died in 1945, Growing Pains tells the story of Carr's life, beginning with her girlhood in pioneer Victoria and going on to her training as an artist in San Francisco, England and France. Also here is the frustration she felt at the rejection of her art by Canadians, of the years of despair when she stopped painting. She had to earn a living, and show more did so by running a small apartment-house, and her painful years of land-ladying and more joyful times raising dogs for sale, claimed all her time and energy. Then, towards the end of her life, came unexpected vindication and triumph when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them. Throughout, the book is informed with Carr's passionate love of and connection with nature. Carr is a natural storyteller whose writing is vivid and vital, informed by wit, nostalgic charm, an artist's eye for description, a deep feeling for creatures and the foibles of humanity--all the things that made her previous books Klee Wyck and Book of Small so popular and critically acclaimed. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
I loved inhabiting this autobiography. Emily Carr writes in way that makes you want to be with her, like a friend.
There are extraordinary moments of insightful expression
And her deeply felt love of country and its native inhabitants is both show more poignant and expressed with a wonder that transported me:
Indian Sophie was my friend. We sat long whiles upon the wide church steps, talking little, watching the ferry ply between the city and the North Shore, Indian canoes fishing the waters of the Inlet, papooses playing on the beach. p. 278.
There are extraordinary moments of insightful expression
I felt bitter. My sister was peeved. She neither looked at nor asked about my work during the whole two months of her visit. It was then that I made myself into an envelope into which I could thrust my work deep, lick the flap, seal it from everybody. p. 175
And her deeply felt love of country and its native inhabitants is both show more poignant and expressed with a wonder that transported me:
No part of living was normal. We lived on fish and fresh air. We sat on things not meant for sitting on, ate out of vessels not meant to hold food, slept on hardness that bruised us; but the lovely, wild vastness did something to it all. I loved every bit of it – no boundaries, no beginning, no end, one continual shove of growing - edge of land meeting edge of water, with just a ribbon of sand between. P.108.show less
Reminiscences of the British Columbia artist, now a century and more in the past. A rare memoir of life and early education as a painter in early British Columbia, San Francisco, London, Paris and New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also a personal account of growing independence, growing learning and eventually growing old.
Autobiography for A
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
33+ Works 1,711 Members
Emily Carr, generally considered Canada's most famous woman painter, was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1871 and died there in 1945. She was an unusually gifted woman renowned not only for her magnificent paintings but also for her extraordinarily vivid and imaginative prose. She began writing late in life when she was forced by failing show more health to curtail her sketching activities. Her first book, Klee Wyck, was an instant success and won a Governor General's award show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Growing Pains
- Original publication date
- 1946
- People/Characters
- Emily Carr
- Important places
- Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
- Dedication
- To Lauren Harris
- First words
- My baptism is an unpleasant memory.
- Quotations
- Vancouver was then only a little town, but it was growing hard. Almost every day you saw more of her forest being pushed back, half-cleared, waiting to be drained and built upon-- mile upon mile of charred stumps and boggy sk... (show all)unk-cabbage swamp, root-holes filled with brown stagnant water, reflecting blue sky by day, rasping with frog croaks by night, fireweed, rank of growth, springing from the dour soil to burst into loose-hung, lush pink blossoms, dangling from red stalks, their clusters of loveliness trying to hide the hideous transition from wild to tamed land.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Walt Whitman's words came ringing, -- We but level this lift to pass and continue beyond.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 199
- Popularity
- 164,583
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.08)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 3
