George Stewart, Jr
George Stewart, Jr. was a notable Canadian publisher, author, pharmacist, and philatelist born in New York City in 1848, who moved to Canada as an infant. He played a significant role in advocating for a distinctive Canadian literature that was separate from British and American influences during the late 19th century. Stewart began his career in publishing with The Stamp Collector's Monthly Gazette, which he started in 1863, and later founded Stewart's Literary Quarterly Magazine, the only literary publication in Canada at the time of Confederation. His focus on Canadian writing led him to engage with issues of copyright, especially after a legal dispute concerning royalties for his nonfiction work. He held various editorial roles, including at the influential Rose-Belford's Canadian Monthly and the Quebec Daily Chronicle, where he continued to support Canadian authors and literary culture. Throughout his career, Stewart was involved in literary criticism and historical writing, and he was recognized for his contributions with honorary degrees from prestigious universities. He passed away in Quebec City in 1906, leaving behind a legacy of promoting Canadian literature and writers.
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Subject Terms
George Stewart, Jr.
Writer
- Born: November 26, 1848
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: February 26, 1906
- Place of death: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Biography
Canadian publisher, author, pharmacist, and philatelist George Stewart, Jr., was a late nineteenth century advocate for a unique Canadian literature, considered by literary critics as distinct from British and American literature. He was involved in developing Canadian copyright law and worked to provide Canadian writers with a forum that would emphasize and publicize their work and their defining cultural characteristics.
Stewart was born in New York City in 1848 but relocated with his family to Canada while he was still an infant. He had no formal collegiate education but was apprenticed to a pharmacist in 1863. Shortly thereafter, he founded a stamp business and started his first publication, The Stamp Collector’s Monthly Gazette, which he published until 1867. In addition to writings on philately, the Gazette published fiction and articles on literature and politics, and his work on these topics stimulated Stewart’s interest in local writing. In 1867, he abandoned the Gazette, establishing Stewart’s Literary Quarterly Magazine, Canada’s only literary publication at the time of Confederation.
Stewart sold the quarterly in 1871 and it became the New Brunswick Quarterly; Stewart himself took on part-time editorial responsibilities at the Saint John Daily News and then became the literary editor of the New Brunswick Watchman. Throughout the 1870’s, Stewart focused much of his energy on giving lectures and writing essays and criticism in support of Canadian writing.
His interest in copyright was solidified by a conflict with the publishers of Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly. Stewart had relocated to Toronto in 1878 to become an editor at the periodical, and was successful at encouraging the periodical, the most influential literary and political magazine in Canada at that time, to publish Canadian writers. One of the publishers, Alexander Belford, had made his fortune pirating American authors such as Mark Twain and flooding the American market with cheap Canadian-produced paperbacks of their works, and when Stewart published a work of nonfiction history called Canada Under the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin, the publishers refused to pay him royalties. He sued but lost, and resigned within months of accepting the appointment, leaving Toronto to become the editor of the Quebec Daily Chronicle, where he would remain until 1896.
For the rest of his life, Stewart lived and worked in Quebec, continuing to write and give lectures. He contributed articles of biography and history to various encyclopedias and was a founding member and secretary of the English literature section for the Royal Society of Canada. Although his writing is not particularly exceptional from a literary standpoint, his criticism and analysis is incisive, and in 1879 he became the first Canadian elected to the International Literary Congress. He received honorary degrees in 1888-1889 from three prestigious Québécois universities: Universite Laval in Quebec City, Bishop’s College in Lennoxville, and McGill University in Montreal. Stewart died of cerebral apoplexy in 1906, at his home in Quebec City.