"Investigating civilisation" : the city as frontier in the early Prairie novels of Isabel Paterson

This thesis examines two early prairie novels by Isabel Paterson, The Shadow Riders (1916) and The Magpie's Nest (1917). Isabel Paterson is an early Canadian writer whose work has been lost due to critical neglect: her work deserves to be recovered and given its rightful place in the canon of Canadian literature. Chapter One provides a critical survey and evaluation of prairie regionalism. This criticism is the critical background for the thesis. The following two chapters focus on The Shadow Riders and The Magpie's Nest and how they fit into the existing ideas of what it means for a text to be classified as prairie literature. Instead of being preoccupied with the pioneering experience and the prairie landscape, as established criticism holds that prairie novels do, Paterson's novels have urban settings and her characters experience the city as a frontier