Mazo De La Roche

Heather Pearson Kirk (Georgian College)

Ed. by Wendy Roy, University of Saskatchewan
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

Born 15 Jan 1879
Died 12 Jul 1961
Activity 1902-1961

Places

Born in Canada
Active in Canada; England

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Story-writer

Other

Children's/Young Adult writer
Journalist
Poet

Resources

De La Roche's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Mazo de la Roche was one of Canada's most popular and prolific authors. Although she published about thirty-five books during her lifetime, she was best known as the author of the famous Jalna series: sixteen novels about four generations of the family of upper-class Englishman Captain Philip Whiteoak and his aristocratic Irish wife, Adeline Court. The Whiteoak family lives between 1854 and 1954 on a rural estate in Ontario, Canada. The first novel in the series,

Jalna

(1927), won an international novel competition and became a best seller. The sequels also sold extraordinarily well. The Jalna books inspired a Hollywood film,

Jalna

, screened in 1935. They also formed the basis of a play,

Whiteoaks

(1936), the first Canadian play mounted in the West End theatre district of London, England.

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2294 words

Citation: Kirk, Heather Pearson. "Mazo De La Roche". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 June 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1183, accessed 25 November 2024.]