Various editions of Margaret Laurence’s books.

Margaret Laurence, the celebrated novelist and foundational figure of modern Canadian literature who brought Prairie life to the page in her five-book Manawaka cycle (The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners), would have turned 100 years old this month.

Laurence was born in Neepawa, Manitoba on July 18, 1926. She studied English at University College in Winnipeg, and moved to England with her husband in 1949. The couple and their two children then spent several years living in Africa before returning to Canada. Laurence moved again to England after separating from her husband in 1962, returning to Canada permanently in 1974.

Her first novel, This Side Jordan, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 1960, marking the start of a lifelong professional relationship and friendship between her and publisher Jack McClelland that is captured in a collection of their letters published in 2018.

Laurence published extensively, both fiction and nonfiction. Her novels were celebrated both in Canada, where they were published by McClelland & Stewart, and in the U.S. (Knopf) and U.K (Macmillan).  She won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction twice, for A Jest of God and The Diviners, and was made a Companion to the Order of Canada. Later in her career, she turned to children’s books and also wrote a unfinished memoir that was published posthumously. But her contributions to Canadian literature extended beyond her books; she helped to establish both the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Writers’ Trust of Canada and provided personal support and encouragement to many writers.

Though she achieved literary success, her personal life was not without difficulty: in his 1997 biography of the author, James King acknowledged her alcoholism as well as the tension between her need to write and the guilt she felt over the toll that need took on her marriage and her children. In 1986, she was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Laurence died by suicide in 1987 at the age of 60 in Lakefield, Ontario.

To mark Laurence’s centenary, the public library in Neepawa held a book scavenger hunt over the week leading up to July 18, with nine titles for patrons to find.