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Biography
Canadian

Mavis Gallant

1922 — 2014

Mavis Gallant was a Canadian short-story writer who lived in Paris from 1950 until her death and published more than a hundred stories in The New Yorker over five decades. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest short-story writers in the English language. Her stories — set in post-war Europe, particularly among displaced persons, expatriates, and the culturally unmoored — are marvels of social observation, psychological acuity, and formal precision.

Past sales0
Period20th Century
NationalityCanadian
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Mavis Gallant (née Young, 1922–2014) was born on 11 August 1922 in Montreal, Quebec. She worked as a journalist at the Montreal Standard before leaving Canada for Paris in 1950, where she lived for the rest of her life. She began publishing stories in The New Yorker in 1951 and continued for more than fifty years.

Life and Career

Gallant’s decision to leave Canada and become an expatriate in Paris was the defining choice of her literary life. It gave her both subject matter — the lives of Europeans and North Americans displaced by war, migration, and cultural dislocation — and a perspective: the view of someone who belongs nowhere entirely, who observes every social arrangement with the detachment of an outsider.

Her major collections include The Other Paris (1956), My Heart Is Broken (1964), From the Fifteenth District (1979), Home Truths (1981, Governor General’s Award), and Across the Bridge (1993). The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (1996) is the essential single volume.

Major Works and Themes

Gallant wrote about the texture of social life — about the small cruelties, misunderstandings, and accommodations that constitute human relationships. Her particular territory is the world of post-war Europe: the displaced, the stateless, the culturally adrift. Her prose is exact, witty, and merciless in its observation. She does not explain her characters; she shows them — in their gestures, their speech, their silences — and leaves the reader to understand.

Her influence on subsequent short-story writers — particularly Alice Munro, who acknowledged Gallant’s importance — is considerable.

Key Works

  • From the Fifteenth District (1979)
  • Home Truths (1981) — Governor General’s Award
  • Across the Bridge (1993)
  • The Selected Stories (1996)

Collecting Gallant

The Other Paris (1956, Houghton Mifflin) — the debut — is scarce: $50–$200.

The Selected Stories (1996, McClelland & Stewart / Random House) is the most accessible entry point for collectors. Gallant’s books were published in relatively small printings. She signed at readings in Paris but was not widely known to American book-signing audiences. She died in 2014; all signed copies are finite.