Philip Child
Philip Child (1898-1978) was a Canadian author and educator known for his exploration of cultural identity and the complexities of assimilation. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, to a family with American and English roots, he experienced the duality of upper-class privilege and the challenges of cross-cultural dynamics during his upbringing. After enlisting in the Canadian Artillery during World War I and witnessing the brutal realities of war, he returned to academia, ultimately earning his doctorate from Harvard University.
Child’s literary career was marked by a deep engagement with themes of love, cultural tension, and the spiritual dimensions of life and death. His debut novel, "The Village of Souls," juxtaposes the allure of primitive life against the backdrop of French Canada, while his subsequent works, like "God's Sparrows," reflect on existential questions shaped by his wartime experiences. He was also celebrated for his murder mystery, "Mr. Ames Against Time," which earned him prestigious awards for its profound narrative on morality and family. Child's writings, infused with elements of his conservative Christian beliefs and aristocratic perspective, offer a nuanced examination of societal values and personal relationships. After a long career in teaching, he continued to write until his passing, leaving behind a legacy of thought-provoking literature.
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Philip Child
Writer
- Born: January 19, 1898
- Birthplace: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
- Died: February 6, 1978
- Place of death: Willowdale, Ontario, Canada
Biography
Philip Child was born January 19, 1898, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His father was an American steel executive; his mother was a second-generation Canadian whose family had come from England. Child grew up aware of the advantages of upper-class privilege and the thorny realities of cross-culturalism and the uncertainties of identity given the difficulties of assimilation. In 1915, Child matriculated at Trinity College in Ontario but interrupted his studies two years later to enlist in the Canadian Artillery. A commissioned officer, Child was deeply shocked by the brutalities of war and the horrific sacrifice of soldiering.
He returned to Trinity in 1919, where he completed his B.A. with distinction and then earned both his master’s degree (1923) and then his doctorate (1928) at Harvard. Drawn to the dynamic of the classroom, Child accepted several teaching positions before returning to Hamilton to complete an ambitious and experimental historical novel he had begun outlining at Harvard.
Unlike other first novels of his generation, which so often drew on the shattering experience of the war, The Village of Souls tells the story of a protagonist torn between two lovers, one French, the other a native. Set amid the harsh wilderness of precolonial French Canada, the story evolves into a near-allegory that explores both the tensions between an allegiance to the Old World code of culture and civilization and the freedom and passion of the primitive life of the New World, testing the consequences of assimilation and the profound stress of cultural identity. In addition to developing a historic narrative, one thoroughly researched and peopled with engrossing and passionate characters, Child, drawing on his own conservative Christianity, layered the narrative with paranormal elements (hallucinations and ghostly visits) that added to the narrative’s unsettling impact. His sophomore effort, God’s Sparrows, which did draw on his war experience, centered on many of the same thematic elements: the tension between civilization and the primitive, the terrifying absoluteness of death, and the haunting question of what persists after death.
By the early 1940’s, Child returned to Trinity College, where he became over the next forty years a charismatic presence in the classroom and a fixture in campus life. In 1949, his Mr. Ames Against Time, a murder mystery that is more a profound examination of family, morality, and uncompromising sacrifice (a father works relentlessly to clear his estranged son from a bogus murder charge), brought Child both the Ryerson Fiction Award and the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Outstanding Canadian Novel. In 1951, Child published a lengthy prose poem, The Victorian House, that used the metaphor of his own family homestead in Hamilton to extol the tradition, cultural refinement, and rich customs of the upper class that, in his assessment, were easing sadly into irrelevancy.
After retiring from teaching, Child continued to write occasional essays on history and fiction until his death, at eighty, on February 6, 1978. Child’s work, always didactic, reflects his strong conservative Christian temperament and his aristocratic sensibility, which saw in class and refinement a bastion of order and reassuring stability in a chaotic contemporary world.