When Ethel Wilson published her first novel, Hetty Dorval, in1947, she was nearly sixty years old. With her following books, sheestablished herself as British Columbia’s most distinguishedfiction writer and one of Canada’s best loved and most studiedauthors. Although she enjoyed and even encouraged her reputation as anunambitious latecomer who wrote for her own pleasure, she was, as DavidStouck reveals in this book, a person who took her writing veryseriously. Drawing on the Wilson papers held at the University ofBritish Columbia, Stouck provides an important survey of Wilson'stalents while at the same time offering the fullest biography of theauthor to date.