Angels' Shoes and Other Stories

Pickthall (1883-1922) was a Canadian writer of poetry, short stories and novels born in England. Her family moved to Toronto, Ontario, when she was seven and she was educated at Bishop Strachan School where she developed her skills at composition and made lasting friendships. She sold her first story Two-Ears to the Toronto Globe for $3 in 1898 while still a student and the same story won The Mail & Empire's writing competition the following year. By the age of 17 she was a regular contributor to both The Mail & Empire and the Globe, winning a further prize in 1900 for a poem, and three of her serial stories for young readers published in East & West later came out in book form. In 1905 she hired a New York agent and her work was soon appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Scribner's and other US magazines. In 1912 she travelled to England where she remained until 1920, during which time she published an unsuccessful historical novel, a volume of poetry, a large number of short stories, and wrote the novel The Bridge: A Story of the Great Lakes (1919), and a verse drama The Wood Carver's Wife. On her return to Canada she revised The Bridge and saw her verse drama published in the University Magazine and later staged in both Montreal and Toronto. In 1921 she settled in the Clo-oose community of the Ditidaht people on the west coast of Vancouver Island, immortalizing the community in her poem The Sailor's Grave at Clo-oose, VI. Having suffered poor health throughout her life, she died the following year aged just 38. This anthology of 24 of her short stories was published posthumously in 1923, and her father compiled and published her Collected Poems in 1925 and again, definitively, in 1936.