(Stead began his career with poetry; 1912 calf & suede cover of Songs of the Prairie published by New York’s Platt & Peck; cover illustration by Elizabeth Colbourne)
(a rare dj of the 1917 Musson title)
(Stead’s work turned his hand next to fiction; his low-print-run novels are scarce; dust jackets are very rare–this the 1922 Hodder & Stoughton ed.)
(rare 1924 McClelland & Stewart dj)
(rarest Stead–his best book with dj and rare signature; Doran 1926)
(only copy of this I’ve ever seen: 1943 pamphlet of speech he gave to Ottawa Rotary Club on language, Runge Press; someone has typed in an excerpt from one of his poems)
(photo of Stead from Canadian Singers and Their Songs, McClelland & Stewart, 1919)
Robert J.C. Stead–James Campbell (1880-1959). His family homesteaded in Manitoba and that’s where he began his poetic career. He eventually became a PR agent for CPR advertising the West and turned to writing several prairie novels. Stead was unable to publish his novel Dry Water during the Depression and this title was eventually published a half-century after his death, in 2008.