JEAN BLEWETT—how she used to be welcomed at the recitals she gave in different Canadian towns and cities a decade or two ago! She has been called “a woman’s poet,” because of her intensely human treatment of subjects pertaining to the home. Besides her books of poems she has published one novel, Out of the Depths. She is a native of Scotia, Ontario, where she was born November 4th, 1872, the daughter of John and Janet (MacIntyre) McKishnie, both of whom had come to Canada from Argyllshire. Jean McKishnie attended the local public school and the St. Thomas Collegiate Institute. While still in her ’teens her short stories and poems appeared in different periodicals, her first published poem being a lullaby printed in Frank Leslie’s Monthly.

She was married in 1899 to Bassett Blewett, a native of Cornwall, England. Following the appearance of her novel came her first book of verse, Heartsongs, and several years later The Cornflower and Other Poems, which greatly increased her popularity. But her best work was in Jean Blewett’s Poems, published in 1922.

She was for some years a member of the staff of the Toronto Globe, having eventually to resign owing to ill-health. Upon leaving Toronto she lived with her daughter in Lethbridge, Alberta.

She has recently returned to Toronto, which is also the home of her brother Archie P. McKishnie, the novelist. She received a warm welcome from literary colleagues when she attended the meeting of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Authors Association in February of this year.

Following is an excerpt from an appreciation published several years ago in the Globe Magazine'.

. . . She does not attempt wild flights of rhapsody or deep philosophical problems. It is an everyday sort of poetry, simple in theme and treatment, unpretentious, domestic, kindly, humorous and natural .. . Perhaps it is because of this very simplicity of theme and treatment that Mrs. Blewett ’s writings, both in prose and poetry, are so popular among a wry large class of the Canadian public . . . In sentiment and in morals her poems are wholesome and, to use a feminine adjective, ‘sweet’ . . . Mrs. Blewett is perhaps the most conspicuous example in Canada of the class of writers who try to bring the plain people into touch with the highest ideals that are frequently most effectively taught in verse. Iler lessons are of selfdenial, and of the power of love to mould men and women.

On the maternal side Jean Blewett is descended from the noted Gaelic bard Duncan Ban MacIntyre.

Check-List of First Editions.

Out of the Depths, a novel, 1892. Toronto: Hunter Rose & Co.
Heartsongs, 1897. Toronto: George N. Mo-rang.
The Cornflower and Other Poems. 1906. Toronto: William Briggs.
Jean Blewett’s Poems, 1922. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Heart Songs by Jean McKishnie BLEWETT