Alice Munro: A Double Life

139 Pages·1992·2.62 MB·English

by  Catherine Sheldrick Ross

1. Acknowledgements
2. Chronology
3. Alice Munro: A Double Life
1. “The Twin Choices of My Life”
2. “A Very Deceptive Life”
3. Alice Munro Country
4. “Whatever Myths You Want”
5. The Laidlaws: “An Extraordinary Timidity”
6. The Chamneys: “Daring and Defiance and Escape”
7. “Beautiful Girlhood”
8. Wartime
9. “Abdication”
10. Housekeeping
11. “A Way of Surviving as Herself”
12. Self-Help
13. Apprenticeship
14. A Young Married Woman
15. “The Struggle Against Herself”
16. A Delicate Balance
17. Thirty something
18. Dance of the Happy Shades
19. Lives of Girls and Women
20. Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You
21. Breakaway
22. Writer in Residence
23. Who Do You Think You Are?
24. Connections
25. The Moons of Jupiter
26. The Progress of Love
27. Friend of My Youth
28. Material
4. Works Consulted
Canadian Biography Series
ALICE MUNRO: A DOUBLE LIFE

Alice Munro, in 1990.
This picture, taken by ferry Bauer, was used
for the cover of Friend of My Youth.
Alice Munro
A DOUBLE LIFE
Catherine Sheldrick Ross
ECW PRESS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A number of people helped with this book. Thanks are due to Thomas Tausky
and Laurie Kruk for giving me access to their interview material; to Special
Collections, University of Calgary Libraries, for photographs and for access to
archival material; to James Munro for providing photographs and for permission
to reproduce a Munro’s Books bookmark; to McClelland and Stewart for
photographs; and, of course, to Alice Munro and Gerry Fremlin.
The frontispiece and illustration 14, photographs by Jerry Bauer, are provided
courtesy of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart; illustration 2 is
provided by the Regional Collection, University of Western Ontario;
photographs 3, 4, 5, and 7 are provided courtesy of Alice Munro; photographs 6,
9, 10, and 11 are provided courtesy of James Munro; illustrations 8, 12, and 13
are reproduced by permission of Special Collections, University of Calgary
Libraries.
Chronology
The bush area of the Huron Tract, located in southwestern Ontario, is opened to
1830-settlement. In the 1850s, three brothers named Laidlaw leave Halton County to
settle in Morris Township, in Huron County. A falling tree kills one brother as
50 he is clearing the land for farming; another brother is Alice Laidlaw’s
grandfather.
Anne Clarke Chamney is born. She grows up on a poor farm near Carleton Place
1898
in the Ottawa Valley.