INTRODUCTION

In late 1997, Grove's correspondence with A. L. Phelps, which had been believed lost, surfaced and was acquired by the UM Archives, along with a fair number of Grove manuscripts. Most of these literary novels, stories, or essays are well known, and detailed textual analysis and comparison will no doubt afford future FPG scholars interesting glimpses in Grove's working habits. But Grove's often intimate letters to an academic friend who would be his first and most important promoter, throw invaluable spotlights on Grove's career as an emerging Canadian writer, as well as his complex personality.
When Grove connected with Phelps and his colleagues at Wesley College (now the University of Winnipeg), he had been teaching in remote rural areas of Manitoba for seven years. Apart from his first, serially published article "Rousseau als Erzieher" in the German-Canadian newspaper Der Nordwesten in 1914, he had not manifested any literary ambitions. It wasn't until 1922 that he made his Canadian publishing debut with the collection of nature essays, Over Prairie Trails, and their sequel, The Turn of the Year, in 1923.
Already Grove's letters to his first Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewartin the UM Archives have shown what these long-lost letters to Phelps corroborate: encouraged by his charismatic effect on Winnipeg's scholarly elite,he decided in late 1919 to come out of his self-imposed hiding, and reveal histrue calling. To both parties he bragged about "scores of manuscripts" readyto be launched, when the archival evidence indicates that most were yet to bewritten. His self-incriminating autobiographical narrative, however, was highon his list even then.
Here it becomes clear to what extent his past, which he so carefully hid fromthe Canadian public and close friends alike, was a compelling force in his writing.No matter how cleverly he embellished, falsified, distorted and cloaked his actualexperiences in fictional disguise, they stand out today as compulsive, confessionalwriting.
While the Rousseau-article [n] andthe landscape impressions are seemingly devoid of biographical content, his first "Prairie" novel Settlersof the Marsh (1925) is in fact an account of his 1910-1911 life on a smallfarm in Sparta, Kentucky, and deals with the dramatic end to his rocky relationshipwith Else Ploetz, née Endell, later known as Baroness von Freytag-Loringhovenin New York dada circles. The fact that she returned to Germany in April, 1923,moved to Paris three years later, and died there in December 1927 may not havebeen coincidental with Grove's publishing productions becoming increasingly personalin nature.
With his first truly autobiographical masterpiece ASearch for America in1927, he had made the transition from covert to overt self-revelation. The conflictof wanting to reveal and having to conceal [which he did by adding 20 and 7 yearsto the novel's time frame and his age, respectively] is in clear evidence today.Some of his subsequent novels may appear relatively neutral again. But with the1996 identification of the Bonanza Farm described at length in his first autobiographicalbook, and then again, though less carefully distorted, in his second biography, InSearch of Myself (1946, eEd.),two more seemingly harmless novels have been exposed as thoroughly reality-based:both Fruits of the Earth (1933)and Masterof the Mill (1944) are obviously inspired by the dynasty owning the Amenia & SharonLand Company near Fargo, North Dakota.
In late 1929, Grove left Manitoba for Ontario to assume a prominent position with Graphic Publishers who had taken on publishing his first autobiography. Some attention has been paid to his role as figure-head of the short-lived subsidiary Ariston, and a glossy blurb outlining the idealistic program of propagating world literature has been found amongst volumes of Grove'spersonal library at the University of Manitoba. In his letters to Phelps Grove expounds his high-flying plans for a first-class publishing vehicle.
This ambitious venture was doomed nearly from the start by the economic conditionsof the times, but it documents a vision that is firmly rooted in and imitativeof Anton Kippenberg, the scholarly director of Insel Publishers since1905. Under his leadership, Greve's translations shifted noticeably from contemporarymodern or decadent authors like Oscar Wilde, André Gide, H. G. Wells,Meredith and Swinburne, to "world literature" classics like the ArabianNights,Cervantes, Balzac, Flaubert, Swift, and Dickens.
While this correspondence obviously emphasizes Grove's literary plans and dreams,and their realization during the beginning of his writing career in Canada, commentariesand notes will need to make numerous excursions into the complexities of FPG'spast life and his relations with Else von Freytag-Loringhoven (FrL) as evidencedby their respective archival collections held at the University of Manitoba andthe University of Maryland, College Park.

Note: The choice of Rousseau is noteworthy fortwo reasons: there is foremost Greve's "return to nature" ideal, as FrL reports about their 1910/1911 Sparta, Kentucky, farm life, and then Rousseau's best-known book is his autobiographical Confessions [1769].