Robert Lecker

Keepers of the Code is the first book-length history of English-Canadian literary anthologies from 1837 to the present.

Lecker aims to show that these anthologies, like all literature, are shaped by the conflict and contact among various individuals and institutions, including publishers, writers, reviewers, professors, tenure committees, funding agencies, critical journals, banks, and the bookselling industry.

Lecker comments in detail on approximately 75 anthologies.

Although there are scattered articles that focus on these questions in terms of English-Canadian anthologies, this is the first sustained historical study.

Doris Hedges (1896-1972) was a Montreal author who started Canada's first literary agency in 1946.

She published several novels, short stories, and books of poetry; was influential in Montreal literary circles; did a stint as a radio broadcaster; and provided reports to the Wartime Information Board during World War II, possibly as an American spy.

The book deals with all of Hedges’ works in a chronological fashion, mixing biographical commentary with literary analysis to produce a picture of a writer's life and concerns during a period when Canada's literature was coming of age.

Robert Lecker (born 1951) is a Canadian scholar, author, and Greenshields Professor of English at McGill University, where he specializes in Canadian literature.

His PhD dissertation, “Time and Form in the Contemporary Canadian Novel,” examines disruptive representations of time in seven Canadian novels written between 1968 and 1977.

Dennis Lee’s poem, Civil Elegies, originally published in 1968 and revised in 1972, remains one of the most potent poems devoted to the nature of Canadian identity and civil space.

Lecker was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec and began his university studies at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1970.

The following year, he transferred to York University in Toronto where he met Jack David, who had founded the critical journal Essays on Canadian Writing in 1974.

Lecker completed his BA (1974), MA (1976), and PhD (1980) in English at York and was awarded a number of fellowships and scholarships throughout these years.

Lecker joined the editorial board of ECW in 1975.

In 1977 Lecker and Jack David founded ECW Press, which was originally devoted to publishing reference works and critical studies about Canadian literature.

Between 1978 and 1982, Lecker was assistant professor of English at the University of Maine at Orono.

Lecker began teaching at McGill University in 1982.

He was Associate Chair of the Department of English from 1984 to 1986, and directed the M.A. Program from 1989 to 1993.

The press expanded and moved into commercial trade publishing in the mid-1990s.

Lecker managed the Montreal office and David ran the Toronto office.

He also served as a sexual harassment and discrimination officer for McGill University from 1995 to 1997 and 2005 to 2007.

He received the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching at McGill University in 1996.

Lecker is a leading authority on Canadian literature.

From 1996 to 1998 Lecker was a member of the adjudication committee for the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program, and in 1999 he was chair of that committee.

He founded ECW Press in 1997, he co-edited the Canadian literary journal Essays on Canadian Writing between 1975 and 2004, he has edited several anthologies of Canadian and international literature, and he currently heads a literary agency in Montreal, the Robert Lecker Agency.

In 2003, Lecker left the press to start his own literary agency, Robert Lecker Agency.

Lecker discusses his formative experiences at York in his 2006 memoir, Dr. Delicious.

The Cadence of Civil Elegies (2006)

Lecker was named Greenshields Professor of English at McGill University in 2007.

In 2012, Lecker was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his influential studies on literary value in English Canada and Canadian cultural identity.

In addition to his teaching and academic writing, Lecker has held a number of prominent positions in the Canadian publishing industry throughout his career.

In 2012 he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2022, he was awarded the prestigious Lorne Pierce Medal.

Lecker is the author of nine books, which are all critical studies of either Canadian authors or theoretical problems related to the study and history of Canadian literature.

Over the past 15 years he has focused on two areas in particular: canonicity in Canadian literature and anthology formation as a reflection of the evolution of literary value and taste.

He is currently completing a study of Canadian authors and their literary agents.

In addition to his book publications, Lecker has authored over 60 scholarly articles in journals and books in Canada, the US, and overseas, including PMLA, Critical Inquiry, Canadian Literature, Canadian Poetry, Open Letter, Studies in Canadian Literature, Australasian Canadian Studies, and the American Review of Canadian Studies.

'Who Was Doris Hedges?

Keepers of the Code: English-Canadian Literary Anthologies and the Representation of Nation (2013)

The book was released in March 2013 and was positively reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement.

The Search for Canada's First Literary Agent (2020)'