Skevington's Daughter

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Probably all archivists have heard stories about university professors controlling tantalizing collections of papers they will not let anyone else see or use. John Mills' satirical novel Skevington's Daughter is about such a situation. Simon Motley, an English professor at a mythical Ontario university, has acquired letters written in 1840 by Stella Skevington, the daughter of a British explorer, while accompanying herfather, Francis, on a journey in Mexico. These letters are coveted by a colleague of Motley, Harry Peasemarsh, because Francis Skevington has become an importantfigure for the Tidewater Poets, a group of modernistic American writers-they shun vowels-that Peasemarsh is cultivating. The novel follows Peasemarsh through a seriesof more or less comic misadventures ranging from attempted seduction and unsuccessful blackmail to a disastrous break and entry, in his quest for the letters. But Mills is commenting on much more than access and freedom of information. Skevington's Daughter also tries to satirize among other things: academic infighting, radicals, literary scholarship, mounties, homosexuals, the young, the old, feminists, and theauthor, John Mills, himself.

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