Raymond Knister
Encyclopedia
John Raymond Knister was a Canadian poet
, novelist, story writer, columnist, and reviewer, "known primarily for his realistic narrative
s set in rural
Canada
... Knister was a highly respected member of the Canadian literary community during the 1920s and early 1930s, and recent criticism has acknowledged him as a pioneer in establishing a distinctively modern voice in Canadian literature
."
), Ontario
, near Windsor
, Knister attended Victoria College
at the University of Toronto
, but had to drop out after catching pneumonia
. He worked on his father's farm until 1923.
In 1919 Knister began writing and publishing stories and poems about Canadian farm life. He worked in 1922 and 1923 as a book reviewer for the Windsor Border Cities Star and the Detroit Free Press. He moved to Iowa
in 1923 to become associate editor of literary magazine The Midland ("the most important magazine America had produced," according to H.L. Mencken) in Iowa City for a year. During the same time he took courses in creative writing
at Iowa State University
.
By 1924 Knister was a taxi driver in Chicago
, as well as a reviewer for Poetry
magazine and the Chicago Evening Post. "In 1926 he moved to Toronto
, where he freelanced; his work appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly and Saturday Night
." In Toronto he became acquainted with writers Morley Callaghan
, Mazo de la Roche
, Merrill Denison
, and Charles G.D. Roberts
.
Knister had work published in the Paris
literary magazine This Quarter in 1925.
In 1926, Knister put together a collection of nature poetry, Windfalls for Cider. Toronto's Ryerson Press accepted the book for publication, but later had to cancel because of the company's finances.
Knister married Myrtle Gamble in 1927. They had one daughter, Imogen, born in 1930.
In 1928, Knister edited the anthology Canadian Short Stories. The Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (2002) calls the book a "trend-setting anthology."
Knister published his first novel, White Narcissus, in 1929. The book is still in print as part of McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library
series of classic Canadian literature
.
Knister was fascinated with John Keats
, the 19th century English Romantic poet
who had died young. He accumulated "letters and stacks of books about Keats," according to his daughter, and enrolled his wife as a research assistant to help him go through it all. "Apparently, she was to use her reading time on this only, and he frowned upon her spending time reading women's magazines." The Knisters spent eight months researching Keats's life: the result was a 200,000-word, 700 page non-fiction novel
, My Star Predominant.
In 1931, Knister moved to Montreal
, Quebec
. There he became acquainted with the poets of the Montreal Group
– with poet Leo Kennedy he began planning an anthology, similar to his Canadian Short Stories, of Canadian modernist poetry
(an idea that eventually resulted in the landmark New Provinces
in 1936
). He also got to know poet Dorothy Livesay
and novelist Frederick Philip Grove
.
Grove read My Star Predominant, and encouraged Knister to enter the manuscript in the Graphic Publishers' Canadian Novel contest. (Knister's daughter later said that her mother had encouraged him to enter the novel.) Knister cut the book to 120,000 words, mailed it off, and forgot about it. My Star Predominant won the $2,500.00 first prize in the 1931 cross-Canada contest. However, "owing to the failure
of the firm of publishers which offered the prize," the novel was not published.
In 1932, Ryerson Press, which had picked up the rights to My Star Predominant, offered Knister a job as an editor. Before he was to begin working there, Knister drowned in a swimming accident on Lake St. Clair
while on a picnic with his family. (In a memoir published in the 1949 Collected Poems of Raymond Knister, Livesay maintained that Knister had committed suicide
. His wife and daughter strongly disputed that allegation.)
My Star Predominant was published in 1934 in Canada by Ryerson and also in England
.
Knister's daughter, Imogen Givens, wrote a 5,000-word memoir of him, "Raymond Knister: Man or Myth?". The memoir, which made extensive use of Knister's wife's diary, was published in the journal Essays on Canadian Writing (No. 16, Fall-Winter 1979-80).
In 2007, Alberta poet Micheline Mayler published Full Depth: The Raymond Knister Poems, an account of Knister's life and death written as a series of poems.
Knister is buried in Port Dover, Ontario
. His poem "Change" is inscribed on his tombstone.
In 2006 Black Moss Press published There Was a Mr. Cristi, a previously unknown novel discovered by Knister's daughter. In it, Knister tells the tale of a woman who leaves her husband in 1930s Ontario, and moves to Toronto to open a boarding house
. "What follows is a fascinating tale of life in the 1930s in a house that is inhabited by all these bizarre characters. In the background is the 'tall and dark and good looking' Mr. Cristi, and we begin to wonder if we will ever come to know him. He is shrouded in mystery as the characters in this rambling old house come alive vividly for us."
"Of Knister's many short stories
, probably the best known is ‘Mist-green oats’, about a young man's break with his life on the family farm. His stories recurrently focus on some form of psychological initiation." For example, "The First Day of Spring," which "dramatizes the moment when an adolescent farmboy moves from imagining love's pleasures to learning about its possible horrors (a baby's murder
, or at least a savage accident) and his naiveté gives way to a need for order."
Knister's imagist nature poetry includes "such poems as 'The Hawk,' 'Boy Remembers in the Field,' 'Lake Harvest,' 'A Row of Stalls,' and 'The Plowman,' which vividly depict rural experience and the Canadian landscape. In both his poetry and his fiction Knister presented sharply realistic portrayals of everyday images and events in order to illustrate their exceptional qualities, and communicated these impressions in a conversational language style." Also read the hokku-like "Reverie: The Orchard on the Slope," the metaphysical
"Change", and the whimsical "The Quiet Snow."
Poet Anne Burke says of Knister: "Like Edwin Arlington Robinson
whom he reviewed as 'A Great Poet of Today' his work is exemplified by simple straightforward stanzas about modern life and aims at the starkness of absolute truth. Note 'Wind's Way,' 'Reply to August,' 'Night Whistling,' 'Moments When I'm Feeling Poems,' 'Autumn Clouds,' and others. The complexity of Knister's work, like that of Robert Frost
, has been overlooked because of its surface simplicity, bucolic tone, and emphasis on exactly what the poet felt. Knister on his Ontario farm resembles the adolescent Frost especially A Boy's Will, 1913 and North of Boston
, 1914."
In 2003 After Exile, the first reprint of Knister's verse in over 20 years, was released by Toronto's Exile Editions. The book presents dozens of poems never before in book form, plus 30 new poems, and selected prose pieces and letters.
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
, novelist, story writer, columnist, and reviewer, "known primarily for his realistic narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
s set in rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
... Knister was a highly respected member of the Canadian literary community during the 1920s and early 1930s, and recent criticism has acknowledged him as a pioneer in establishing a distinctively modern voice in Canadian literature
Canadian literature
Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...
."
Life
Born at Ruscom (now part of LakeshoreLakeshore, Ontario
Lakeshore is a town in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on Lake St. Clair. Its nearest city is Windsor, located in Essex County. The town was incorporated in 1999 by amalgamating the Town of Belle River with the townships of Maidstone, Rochester, Tilbury North, and Tilbury West.Lakeshore has a...
), Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, near Windsor
Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor...
, Knister attended Victoria College
Victoria University, Toronto
Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...
at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
, but had to drop out after catching pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
. He worked on his father's farm until 1923.
In 1919 Knister began writing and publishing stories and poems about Canadian farm life. He worked in 1922 and 1923 as a book reviewer for the Windsor Border Cities Star and the Detroit Free Press. He moved to Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
in 1923 to become associate editor of literary magazine The Midland ("the most important magazine America had produced," according to H.L. Mencken) in Iowa City for a year. During the same time he took courses in creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
at Iowa State University
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University , is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced astronauts, scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a host of...
.
By 1924 Knister was a taxi driver in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, as well as a reviewer for Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
magazine and the Chicago Evening Post. "In 1926 he moved to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, where he freelanced; his work appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly and Saturday Night
Saturday Night (magazine)
Saturday Night was a Canadian general interest magazine. It was founded in Toronto, Ontario in 1887.The publication was first established as a weekly broadsheet newspaper about public affairs and the arts, which was later expanded into a general interest magazine. The editor, Edmund E. Sheppard,...
." In Toronto he became acquainted with writers Morley Callaghan
Morley Callaghan
Morley Callaghan, was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality.-Biography:...
, Mazo de la Roche
Mazo de la Roche
Mazo de la Roche , born Mazo Louise Roche in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, was the author of the Jalna novels, one of the most popular series of books of her time.-Early life:...
, Merrill Denison
Merrill Denison
Merrill Denison was a Canadian playwright.Born in Detroit and raised in Ontario, Denison's mother was American , and his father was of American Revolutionary stock....
, and Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......
.
Knister had work published in the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
literary magazine This Quarter in 1925.
In 1926, Knister put together a collection of nature poetry, Windfalls for Cider. Toronto's Ryerson Press accepted the book for publication, but later had to cancel because of the company's finances.
Knister married Myrtle Gamble in 1927. They had one daughter, Imogen, born in 1930.
In 1928, Knister edited the anthology Canadian Short Stories. The Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (2002) calls the book a "trend-setting anthology."
Knister published his first novel, White Narcissus, in 1929. The book is still in print as part of McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library
New Canadian Library
The New Canadian Library is a publishing imprint of the Canadian company McClelland and Stewart. The series aims to present classic works of Canadian literature in paperback. Each work published in the series includes a short essay by another notable Canadian writer, discussing the historical...
series of classic Canadian literature
Canadian literature
Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...
.
Knister was fascinated with John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, the 19th century English Romantic poet
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
who had died young. He accumulated "letters and stacks of books about Keats," according to his daughter, and enrolled his wife as a research assistant to help him go through it all. "Apparently, she was to use her reading time on this only, and he frowned upon her spending time reading women's magazines." The Knisters spent eight months researching Keats's life: the result was a 200,000-word, 700 page non-fiction novel
Non-fiction novel
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real historical figures and actual events narrated woven together with fictitious allegations and using the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely-defined and flexible genre...
, My Star Predominant.
In 1931, Knister moved to Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
. There he became acquainted with the poets of the Montreal Group
Montreal Group
The Montreal Group was a circle of Canadian modernist writers formed in the mid-1920s at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, which included Leon Edel, John Glassco, A.M. Klein, Leo Kennedy, F.R. Scott, and A.J.M. Smith. Most of the group's members attended McGill as undergraduates. Due to this...
– with poet Leo Kennedy he began planning an anthology, similar to his Canadian Short Stories, of Canadian modernist poetry
Modernist poetry in English
Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional...
(an idea that eventually resulted in the landmark New Provinces
New Provinces (poetry anthology)
New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors was an anthology of Canadian poetry published in the 1930s, anonymously edited by F.R. Scott assisted by Leo Kennedy and A.J.M. Smith. The first anthology of Canadian modernist poetry, it has been hailed as a "landmark anthology" and a "milestone selection...
in 1936
1936 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* James Laughlin founds New Directions Publishers in New York, which published many modern poets for the first time;...
). He also got to know poet Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.-Life:...
and novelist Frederick Philip Grove
Frederick Philip Grove
Frederick Philip Grove was born Felix Paul Greve in Radomno, West Prussia, German Empire . He was best known as a prolific translator before he left Berlin for start a new life in North America in late July 1909...
.
Grove read My Star Predominant, and encouraged Knister to enter the manuscript in the Graphic Publishers' Canadian Novel contest. (Knister's daughter later said that her mother had encouraged him to enter the novel.) Knister cut the book to 120,000 words, mailed it off, and forgot about it. My Star Predominant won the $2,500.00 first prize in the 1931 cross-Canada contest. However, "owing to the failure
Business failure
Business failure refers to a company ceasing operations following its inability to make a profit or to bring in enough revenue to cover its expenses...
of the firm of publishers which offered the prize," the novel was not published.
In 1932, Ryerson Press, which had picked up the rights to My Star Predominant, offered Knister a job as an editor. Before he was to begin working there, Knister drowned in a swimming accident on Lake St. Clair
Lake Saint Clair (North America)
Lake St. Clair is a fresh-water lake named after Clare of Assisi that lies between the Province of Ontario and the State of Michigan, and its midline also forms the boundary between Canada and the United States of America. Lake St. Clair includes the Anchor Bay along the Metro Detroit coastline...
while on a picnic with his family. (In a memoir published in the 1949 Collected Poems of Raymond Knister, Livesay maintained that Knister had committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. His wife and daughter strongly disputed that allegation.)
My Star Predominant was published in 1934 in Canada by Ryerson and also in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Knister's daughter, Imogen Givens, wrote a 5,000-word memoir of him, "Raymond Knister: Man or Myth?". The memoir, which made extensive use of Knister's wife's diary, was published in the journal Essays on Canadian Writing (No. 16, Fall-Winter 1979-80).
In 2007, Alberta poet Micheline Mayler published Full Depth: The Raymond Knister Poems, an account of Knister's life and death written as a series of poems.
Knister is buried in Port Dover, Ontario
Port Dover, Ontario
Port Dover is an unincorporated community and former town located in Norfolk County, Ontario, Canada on the north shore of Lake Erie.The community was the subject of an American raid during the War of 1812, on May 14, 1814....
. His poem "Change" is inscribed on his tombstone.
Writing
Besides his four novels, Knister wrote roughly one hundred poems, almost as many short stories and sketches, and dozens of critical works, including essays, editorials, and book reviews. "To his own writing and criticism, Knister brought a mind attuned to new literary developments."Fiction
"Farm work provided him with realistic details for his stories and his first novel, White Narcissus (1929)." Set in rural Ontario, "The novel concerns a writer, Richard Milne, who returns home in order to make a final attempt to convince his childhood sweetheart, Ada Lethen, to marry him. Ada feels it is her duty to stay at home because for years, as a consequence of a quarrel, her parents have communicated only through her.... While the novel is usually and justly considered a work of realism, it has also been suggested that it contains elements of romanticism, and that the lyricism of some passages approaches prose-poetry."In 2006 Black Moss Press published There Was a Mr. Cristi, a previously unknown novel discovered by Knister's daughter. In it, Knister tells the tale of a woman who leaves her husband in 1930s Ontario, and moves to Toronto to open a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
. "What follows is a fascinating tale of life in the 1930s in a house that is inhabited by all these bizarre characters. In the background is the 'tall and dark and good looking' Mr. Cristi, and we begin to wonder if we will ever come to know him. He is shrouded in mystery as the characters in this rambling old house come alive vividly for us."
"Of Knister's many short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...
, probably the best known is ‘Mist-green oats’, about a young man's break with his life on the family farm. His stories recurrently focus on some form of psychological initiation." For example, "The First Day of Spring," which "dramatizes the moment when an adolescent farmboy moves from imagining love's pleasures to learning about its possible horrors (a baby's murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, or at least a savage accident) and his naiveté gives way to a need for order."
Poetry
| Change I shall not wonder more, then, But I shall know. Leaves change, and birds, flowers, And after years are still the same. The sea's breast heaves in sighs to the moon, But they are moon and sea forever. As in other times the trees stand tense and lonely, And spread a hollow moan of other times. You will be you yourself, I'll find you more, not else, For vintage of the woeful years. The sea breathes, or broods, or loudens, Is bright or is mist and the end of the world; And the sea is constant to change. I shall not wonder more, then, But I shall know. |
| — Raymond Knister, The Midland 8.12 (December 1922), 332. |
Knister's imagist nature poetry includes "such poems as 'The Hawk,' 'Boy Remembers in the Field,' 'Lake Harvest,' 'A Row of Stalls,' and 'The Plowman,' which vividly depict rural experience and the Canadian landscape. In both his poetry and his fiction Knister presented sharply realistic portrayals of everyday images and events in order to illustrate their exceptional qualities, and communicated these impressions in a conversational language style." Also read the hokku-like "Reverie: The Orchard on the Slope," the metaphysical
Metaphysical poets
The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor...
"Change", and the whimsical "The Quiet Snow."
Poet Anne Burke says of Knister: "Like Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.- Biography :Robinson was born in Head Tide, Lincoln County, Maine, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870...
whom he reviewed as 'A Great Poet of Today' his work is exemplified by simple straightforward stanzas about modern life and aims at the starkness of absolute truth. Note 'Wind's Way,' 'Reply to August,' 'Night Whistling,' 'Moments When I'm Feeling Poems,' 'Autumn Clouds,' and others. The complexity of Knister's work, like that of Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, has been overlooked because of its surface simplicity, bucolic tone, and emphasis on exactly what the poet felt. Knister on his Ontario farm resembles the adolescent Frost especially A Boy's Will, 1913 and North of Boston
North of Boston
North of Boston is a 1914 poetry collection by Robert Frost. It includes two of his most famous poems, "Mending Wall" and "After Apple-Picking"...
, 1914."
In 2003 After Exile, the first reprint of Knister's verse in over 20 years, was released by Toronto's Exile Editions. The book presents dozens of poems never before in book form, plus 30 new poems, and selected prose pieces and letters.
Poetry
- Collected Poems of Raymond Knister. Dorothy Livesay ed. Toronto, Ryerson, 1949.
- Windfalls for Cider: The poems of Ray Knister. Joy Kuropatwa ed. Windsor, ON: Black Moss, 1983.
- After Exile complete poems compiled by Gregory Betts (Exile, 2003)
Prose
- White Narcissus. London, UK: Cape, 1929. Toronto: Macmillan, 1929.
- Toronto: McClelland & Stewart New Canadian Library, 1962, 1990. ISBN 978-0-7710-9402-6
- My Star Predominant. Toronto: Ryerson, 1934.
- Selected Stories of Raymond Knister. Michael Gnarowski ed. Ottawa. U of Ottawa P, 1972.
- Raymond Knister: Poems, Stories and Essays ed. David Aronson (1975)
- The First Day of Spring. Stories and Other Prose. Toronto, Buffalo: U of Toronto P, 1976. ISBN 0802020690, ISBN 0802062982
- There Was a Mr. Cristi (Windsor: Black Moss, 2006) ISBN 0-88753-414-7
- Boy Remembers in the Field (2006)
- Grapes (2006)
- Hackman's Night. Windsor: Black Moss, 2007. ISBN 9780887534423
- Soil in Smoke (unpublished)
- Turning Loam (unpublished)
Edited
- Canadian Short Stories. Toronto: Macmillan, 1928. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries P, 1971.
Fonds
- The Raymond Knister papers. Bruce Whiteman comp. Hamilton, ON: Mills Memorial Library, McMaster U, 1981.
- Raymond Knister fonds. Rev. ed. Toronto: Victoria University Library, 2006.
- Except where noted, bibliographic information courtesy of Online Guide to Writing in Canada.
External links
- The Raymond Knister Collection at the Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto
- Raymond Knister at University of Toronto LibrariesUniversity of Toronto LibrariesThe University of Toronto Libraries is the library system of the University of Toronto, comprising about 30 individual libraries that hold more than 10 million bound volumes and 5 million microform volumes...