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Ana Historic: A Novel
A classic of Canadian literature, here is the A List edition of Daphne Marlatt’s utterly original novel about rescuing a forgotten woman from obscurity. Featuring a new introduced by celebrated author Lynn Crosbie.
Ana Historic is the story of Mrs. Richards, a woman of no history, who appears briefly in 1873 in the civic archives of Vancouver. It is also the story of Annie, a contemporary, who becomes obsessed with the possibilities of Mrs. Richards’s life.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1988
5 people are currently reading
400 people want to read
About the author
Daphne Marlatt
53 books13 followers"Nationality: Canadian (originally Maylasian, immigrated to Canada in 1951). Born: Daphne Shirley Buckle, Melbourne, Australia, 1942.
Education: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1960-64, B.A.; University of Indiana, Bloomington, 1964-67, M.A. 1968. Career: Has taught at University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan, University of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, University of Alberta, McMaster University, University of Manitoba; second vice chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, 1987-88.
Awards: MacMillan and Brissenden award for creative writing; Canada Council award. Member: Founding member of West Coast Women and Words Society.
Other Work:
Plays
Radio Plays:
Steveston, 1976.
Other
Zócalo. Toronto, Coach House, 1977.
Readings from the Labyrinth. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1998.
Editor, Lost Language: Selected Poems of Maxine Gadd. Toronto, Coach House Press, 1982.
Editor, Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures. Vancouver, Press Gang, 1990.
Editor, Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1997.
Translator, Mauve, by Nicole Brossard. Montreal, Nouvelle Barre du Jour/Writing, 1985.
*
The National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
Critical Studies:
Translation A to Z: Notes on Daphne Marlatt's "Ana Historic" by Pamela Banting, Edmonton, NeWest Press, 1991; "I Quote Myself"; or, A Map of Mrs. Reading: Re-siting "Women's Place" in "Anna Historic" by Manina Jones, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993; The Country of Her Own Body: Ana Historic, by Frank Davey, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993.
"Although I think of myself as a poet first, I began writing both fiction and lyric poems in the early 1960s. My collections of poetry have usually had a loose narrative shape as I tend to write in sequences, or "books." As an immigrant, I'd long held the ambition to write an historical novel about Vancouver, but Ana Historic actually critiqued and broke open the genre, as it also increased my fascination with the potential for openness in the novel form. Influenced by the development of "fiction/theory" in Quebec by feminist writers there, I see open structures combined with a folding or echoing of women's experiences in different time periods as a way to convey more of the unwritten or culturally overwritten aspects of what it means to be alive as a woman today.'"
* * *
Read more: "Daphne Marlatt Biography - Daphne Marlatt comments:" - http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4556...
Education: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1960-64, B.A.; University of Indiana, Bloomington, 1964-67, M.A. 1968. Career: Has taught at University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan, University of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, University of Alberta, McMaster University, University of Manitoba; second vice chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, 1987-88.
Awards: MacMillan and Brissenden award for creative writing; Canada Council award. Member: Founding member of West Coast Women and Words Society.
Other Work:
Plays
Radio Plays:
Steveston, 1976.
Other
Zócalo. Toronto, Coach House, 1977.
Readings from the Labyrinth. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1998.
Editor, Lost Language: Selected Poems of Maxine Gadd. Toronto, Coach House Press, 1982.
Editor, Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures. Vancouver, Press Gang, 1990.
Editor, Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka. Edmonton, Alberta, NeWest Press, 1997.
Translator, Mauve, by Nicole Brossard. Montreal, Nouvelle Barre du Jour/Writing, 1985.
*
The National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
Critical Studies:
Translation A to Z: Notes on Daphne Marlatt's "Ana Historic" by Pamela Banting, Edmonton, NeWest Press, 1991; "I Quote Myself"; or, A Map of Mrs. Reading: Re-siting "Women's Place" in "Anna Historic" by Manina Jones, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993; The Country of Her Own Body: Ana Historic, by Frank Davey, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993.
"Although I think of myself as a poet first, I began writing both fiction and lyric poems in the early 1960s. My collections of poetry have usually had a loose narrative shape as I tend to write in sequences, or "books." As an immigrant, I'd long held the ambition to write an historical novel about Vancouver, but Ana Historic actually critiqued and broke open the genre, as it also increased my fascination with the potential for openness in the novel form. Influenced by the development of "fiction/theory" in Quebec by feminist writers there, I see open structures combined with a folding or echoing of women's experiences in different time periods as a way to convey more of the unwritten or culturally overwritten aspects of what it means to be alive as a woman today.'"
* * *
Read more: "Daphne Marlatt Biography - Daphne Marlatt comments:" - http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4556...
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
March 7, 2018
4.75 stars
This is the story of a woman writing a story of and to her mother, as well as the former’s research into and writing of a story (or stories) of a 19th-century woman mentioned in a mere prepositional phrase in a local archive. But it’s more than the story, or stories, of these women: partly a mediation on language (there's also a not-gratuitous use of non-capitalization) and, especially and more importantly, a ‘completion’ of the unwritten history of women, and an indictment of their erasure.
I wasn’t immediately thrilled with the ending, though it’s beautifully written; but as I continued to think of it, a further meaning jolted to mind, rendering me satisfied. Even more telling for me, it’s a book I will return to: it says so much in only 150 pages.
This is the story of a woman writing a story of and to her mother, as well as the former’s research into and writing of a story (or stories) of a 19th-century woman mentioned in a mere prepositional phrase in a local archive. But it’s more than the story, or stories, of these women: partly a mediation on language (there's also a not-gratuitous use of non-capitalization) and, especially and more importantly, a ‘completion’ of the unwritten history of women, and an indictment of their erasure.
I wasn’t immediately thrilled with the ending, though it’s beautifully written; but as I continued to think of it, a further meaning jolted to mind, rendering me satisfied. Even more telling for me, it’s a book I will return to: it says so much in only 150 pages.
December 18, 2017
For a viscerally experimental and gorgeously postmodern glimpse at queer Canadian women’s herstory, there is no better place to look than Daphne Marlatt’s 1988 novel Ana Historic. I say postmodern and experimental because the novel undoubtedly is, but this is not so much a warning as an invitation to watch Marlatt deftly and beautifully use words to carve out a space for queer women not only in Canadian history, but also in contemporary Canadian society. This carving needs to take the form of Marlatt’s disarming poetics and rhizomatic, circular style in order to do the difficult and necessary work of counteracting the overwhelmingly masculinist history that the protagonist Annie—ironically or perhaps appropriately a failed history graduate student—begins to understand as only “a certain voice” (111) ...
see the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2011/10/23/casey-...
see the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2011/10/23/casey-...
August 1, 2007
I wrote my thesis on this novel. It's a complicated book, built in layers and emminently re-readable. Truth and fiction and history and imagination intersect and take a real woman off the rails of history and into a lie more truthful than anything written about her in the history books. That a real person would turn, mid-narrative and stray into fiction shows history for "an assemblage of facts in a tangle of hair"...
March 22, 2023
I am not a very good reader of experimental texts, and so I had a hard time following the various storylines, but the individual paragraphs and ideas were very beautiful.
February 24, 2020
this is a beautiful book about mothers and forgotten women’s histories and love shared between women. reignited a lot of feelings brought up by little women earlier this year about utopia and mothers and sisters, and the idea that you should willingly leave these things behind in favour of a life with a man ???!
It made me feel closer to my mother and her mother and I will hold it very near:’)
It made me feel closer to my mother and her mother and I will hold it very near:’)
April 30, 2021
Ana Historic is unique in that it bends the genre of the novel and blurs the lines between prose and poetry. I appreciated the idea of Annie re-writing and recounting the histories of women who were originally written off as wives, widows; property, essentially. Throughout this book was the ongoing commentary that women's experiences are mediated by their bodies, and how men treat them for better or worse. One interesting passage was when Annie described how her male classmates used crude language to mock women's bodies "boobs, twat, slit; don't act like a boob" as a way of subtly ascertaining their dominance.
I love how Annie was originally supposed to be assisting her much older husband, who was her former history professor, in his research, but ended up writing her own book to give a voice to Ana Richards, a widow briefly mentioned in a book of Vancouver archives from 1873. One of my favourite quotes from this book is: "we give birth to baby boys and men make men of them as fast as we can. they try to make us think they make women if us too but it's not true. it's women imagining all that women could be that brings us into the world." This beautiful passage speaks to how women may inspire each other to forge their own path, which offers a positive ending for both Ana and Annie ultimately, and perhaps simletaneously.
I love how Annie was originally supposed to be assisting her much older husband, who was her former history professor, in his research, but ended up writing her own book to give a voice to Ana Richards, a widow briefly mentioned in a book of Vancouver archives from 1873. One of my favourite quotes from this book is: "we give birth to baby boys and men make men of them as fast as we can. they try to make us think they make women if us too but it's not true. it's women imagining all that women could be that brings us into the world." This beautiful passage speaks to how women may inspire each other to forge their own path, which offers a positive ending for both Ana and Annie ultimately, and perhaps simletaneously.
April 11, 2017
can't tell if this is bad poetry or just bad.
April 4, 2017
Loved the poetics and language.
December 21, 2014
Ana Historic is a beautiful text of the recovery of women's voices and Marlatt is able to play with language and punctuation to create a text that brings attention to narration as an act itself and the power of narration to either be responsible for erasure or to give voice to people who man not normally be given voice to.
Marlatt reminds the reader that history is a narrative process and one that is subjective and constructed through current social biases. What gets remembered is an inherently political act and it is always gendered.
Marlatt reminds the reader that history is a narrative process and one that is subjective and constructed through current social biases. What gets remembered is an inherently political act and it is always gendered.
April 12, 2018
A great read about who tells history, carving out of queer spaces, what Friedan called “the problem that has no name” and frontier British Columbia. The way Marlatt’s prose moved - jagged, rhythmic and clear - kept me glued to this book, even if it’s not linear and somewhere in the realm of “experimental” fiction. At times, I was reminded of Friedan, at others of Renata Adler, but really Marlatt leaves a distinct impression with this one. Recommended.
March 30, 2013
Marlatt interweaves an exploration of Mrs Richardson, schooltacher, whose name appears briefly in the early history of Vancouver with the story of Ana who is on a journey of her own as a writer, as her mother's daughter and wife of an academic - lovely, lyrical and formally very inventive!
July 21, 2016
A gorgeous experiment in historical fiction, poetry, and women's studies.
Marlatt has a knack for being delicate and frank simultaneously, and for exploring the mundane, making it new and unthought of and special.
Marlatt has a knack for being delicate and frank simultaneously, and for exploring the mundane, making it new and unthought of and special.
March 5, 2026
On re-read, I find myself a lot more cynical about it (and I think I now see it much more as a product of its time) but still a very lovely and very intelligent book.
June 17, 2023
at first I found it hard to get into - due to the experimental, poetic, haphazard & nonlinear prose. It's beautiful, but I felt a little confused half the time. By midway through, I was grabbed. There's such tiny little sadnesses. It left me wanting more, feeling strange. Like a sledgehammer. I'm grateful the author left it on a note of looking forward and onward, after so much melancholy and reflections on the past. I didn't expect to like it so much - am looking forward to a reread because I think there's layers in here.
September 20, 2020
this book is so weird but it made me tear up
December 31, 2020
This book needs to return into print so that more people can discover it.
It's an important book for the history of Can-lit.
It's an important book for the history of Can-lit.
February 25, 2024
Unfortunately I am not smart enough for this level of postmodernism lol
I enjoyed the parts I understood but the narrative was indecipherable for 80% of the book :’(
I enjoyed the parts I understood but the narrative was indecipherable for 80% of the book :’(
Read
October 8, 2024DNF Cette prose me perd.
April 21, 2025
Exquisite.
December 31, 2021
Edit: Best book of 2021:
This book was initially published in 1988 and tells two amazing stories of feminism: of a woman who moved to Vancouver in the 1870s to be a teacher. A woman initially known only by her husband’s name, Mrs. Richard’s. The other, Annie, a woman in the 1980s, mother and wife, trying to reveal the history of the woman behind the man, lest she be forgotten to history all together. As she combs Vancouver archives to uncover the story of Ana Richards, she discovers more about herself, the dissatisfaction she feels, and what she truly wants instead. This book is poetic, written in a descriptive, free-flowing form. Sometimes it is unclear if we are reading about Annie or Ana, or even both. Over a hundred years separates their experiences but we are shown how similar they really both are. A beautiful work of feminist fiction, I underlined and annotated throughout, wanting to capture every line for my own.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I bought this book for the cover -- I’ve learned that I love anything that’s given a @HouseofAnansi ‘A List’ reprint. So between that and the captivating synopsis, I knew I needed to read this book.
The book is written in a poetic, train-of-thought style and mostly is from the perspective of Annie, a contemporary woman who, after seeing reference in an archive to a woman known only as “Mrs. Richards”, sets about to discover the rest of her history. Who was Mrs. Richards? What was her first name? Where did she come from? Where did she end up? While doing research to uncover the answers to these questions, Annie learns more about herself, her own past, and what she wants out of her life.
It was only last year that a local paper did a profile on Barbara Ann Robertson, a founding president of the Nelson Library Association. The article noted that “always referred to only as Mrs. J. Roderick Robertson, her given names were only recently discovered.” This blew me away. That Mr. Robertson could take all the credit for his wife building my local library a hundred years ago, and have the woman behind it obscured. How many other women faced the same fate? Or worse -- not remembered at all? It was with this in mind I devoured Ana Historic.
The book plays with history, fiction, and memoir. The lines between the actual history Annie is uncovering, reflections of her relationship with her mother, her husband, and her children, and the fiction she crafts for Mrs. Richards to fill in the blanks are blurred, switching in the middle of some paragraphs, entwining Annie and Ana Richards, and their fates.
Having just read “Women and other Monsters” by @j_zimms, a book of essays asking women to embrace their monstrousness, I loved the cosmic coincidence that in this book there was also a lot of comparisons between women and monsters, “there is a monster, there is something monstrous here, but its not you.”
This was a beautiful work of Canadian feminist fiction. It is a short read, but a beautiful, engaging one, and will be one of my favourites of the year.
This book was initially published in 1988 and tells two amazing stories of feminism: of a woman who moved to Vancouver in the 1870s to be a teacher. A woman initially known only by her husband’s name, Mrs. Richard’s. The other, Annie, a woman in the 1980s, mother and wife, trying to reveal the history of the woman behind the man, lest she be forgotten to history all together. As she combs Vancouver archives to uncover the story of Ana Richards, she discovers more about herself, the dissatisfaction she feels, and what she truly wants instead. This book is poetic, written in a descriptive, free-flowing form. Sometimes it is unclear if we are reading about Annie or Ana, or even both. Over a hundred years separates their experiences but we are shown how similar they really both are. A beautiful work of feminist fiction, I underlined and annotated throughout, wanting to capture every line for my own.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I bought this book for the cover -- I’ve learned that I love anything that’s given a @HouseofAnansi ‘A List’ reprint. So between that and the captivating synopsis, I knew I needed to read this book.
The book is written in a poetic, train-of-thought style and mostly is from the perspective of Annie, a contemporary woman who, after seeing reference in an archive to a woman known only as “Mrs. Richards”, sets about to discover the rest of her history. Who was Mrs. Richards? What was her first name? Where did she come from? Where did she end up? While doing research to uncover the answers to these questions, Annie learns more about herself, her own past, and what she wants out of her life.
It was only last year that a local paper did a profile on Barbara Ann Robertson, a founding president of the Nelson Library Association. The article noted that “always referred to only as Mrs. J. Roderick Robertson, her given names were only recently discovered.” This blew me away. That Mr. Robertson could take all the credit for his wife building my local library a hundred years ago, and have the woman behind it obscured. How many other women faced the same fate? Or worse -- not remembered at all? It was with this in mind I devoured Ana Historic.
The book plays with history, fiction, and memoir. The lines between the actual history Annie is uncovering, reflections of her relationship with her mother, her husband, and her children, and the fiction she crafts for Mrs. Richards to fill in the blanks are blurred, switching in the middle of some paragraphs, entwining Annie and Ana Richards, and their fates.
Having just read “Women and other Monsters” by @j_zimms, a book of essays asking women to embrace their monstrousness, I loved the cosmic coincidence that in this book there was also a lot of comparisons between women and monsters, “there is a monster, there is something monstrous here, but its not you.”
This was a beautiful work of Canadian feminist fiction. It is a short read, but a beautiful, engaging one, and will be one of my favourites of the year.
May 24, 2011
Read this for WS 349: Film, Literature and Culture Production: Re-Imagining History through Contemporary Women's Writing with Christine St. Peter.
Read
July 30, 2011One of my enduring favourites
April 22, 2017
My favourite line of all time, "it's women imagining all that women could be that beings is into the world." - Daphne Marlatt, Ana Historic
April 8, 2017
A wonder.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews