This critical edition of Man Should Rejoice is comprised of a critical
introduction, a bibliography of published and unpublished sources, a
fully-edited text based on a typescript of the novel from the McGill
archives, a list of textual emendations, and explanatory notes that
contextualize the novel.
The introduction draws upon extensive archival research undertaken in
three Canadian archival collections located in Montreal and Calgary and
provides relevant historical, cultural, and biographical context for the
novel which was completed in 1937 and left unpublished due to economic
conditions during the Great Depression.
It reconstructs, from hundreds of archival documents, a textual history
of the novel's production that acknowledges the crucial contribution of
Dorothy Duncan (who heavily revised the text and assisted MacLennan
behind the scenes). It also explores the critical reception of
MacLennan's fiction from the 1930s to the present.