A blog I have been checking in on periodically for several months now, and need to check in on more regularly, is Brian Busby’s The Dusty Bookcase: A Very Casual Exploration of the Dominion’s Suppressed, Ignored and Forgotten. If it is a casual exploration, it remains an extremely committed and far reaching one. Busby is probably familiar to many who read CNQ at least intermittently as the author of Character Parts, that oddly fascinating look at CanLit. On the Dusty Bookcase Busby continues his exploration of the odds, sods and forgotten of CanLit’s pantheon in a way that is eclectic, informative and almost always entertaining. Busby describes himself as “a writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile” and the author of “many other odds and ends, some of which I dare not speak.” Since one of the (many) focuses of this blog is the history of pornographic writing in Canada, and one of Busby’s next literary projects is a biography of the poet, novelist and wildly successful often-closet pornographer John Glassco, whether he, like Russell Smith, has tried his hand at some pseudonymous pornographic scratchings is open to speculation. In any case, you’ll find Glassco alongside, most recently, John Gray, Gordon Sinclair, Gilbert Parker, and many other forgotten writers of yore. You’ll find histories of rare volumes and advice on where you can find them and how much you might have to pay. Short essays on the lives of Busby’s subjects, and how they tie into their work. Images and histories of beautiful books, available from almost any bookseller (including this one) in the land. Rants on bookselling and advice on book collecting. Odd visual treats, including wonderful book covers and advertisements. Bibliographic asides. It ranks, to my mind, as one of the best maintained and most interesting blogs dealing with Canadian literary history I’ve come across, and is certainly something anyone interested in the subject should bookmark and check in on from time to time.
To get a taste of Busby’s approach, please check out his most recent post, “Portrait of a Former Mistress,” the story behind G. D. Robert’s 1902 novel Barbara Ladd (a photograph of the book begins this post) Yesterday would have been G.D. Robert’s 150th birthday, the occasion of Busby’s post. See: you’ve learned something already.