This edition of Nelligan's poems, with a critical introduction by the
editor and translator, is the first complete English translation of
Nelligan's poetry authorized by the Emile Nelligan Foundation. With this
book the editor hopes to persuade the reader that Emile Nelligan, the
most brilliant and original of the poets of the Ecole Littéraire of
Montreal, was also the finest Canadian poet of the nineteenth century.
In this view he is seconded by the American critic Edmund Wilson, who
wrote: The accepted idea [in Canada]. . . is that the poetry of
English Canada is excellent and better than their fiction, and it
irritates them to be told that the best Canadian poet was French.