Jack McClelland
by Nathalie Atkinson -- Publishers Weekly, 6/21/2004
Jack McClelland, who famously said he published "authors, not books," died at his Toronto home last week. He was 81. McClelland joined McClelland & Stewart, the family publishing firm founded by his father in 1906, after his release from the Royal Navy in 1946, and proceeded to cut a swath in Canadian publishing culture. Under his leadership, M&S became Canada 's most celebrated house, publishing CanLit greats like Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat and Margaret Laurence. An enthusiastic, innovative and flamboyant promoter, McClelland was very conscious of creating a Canadian literature where there had not been one before, and he was the first to get authors into the national media, publish them in mass market and forge international co-publishing deals for them. When he established the Seal First Novel Award in 1978, it came with a C$50,000 purse, and winners were co-published by Little, Brown in the U.S. and Andre Deutsch in the U.K.
