I learned recently that the first Canadian book to sell over a million copies was Beautiful Joe by (Margaret) Marshall Saunders, one of my favorite books as a child. I took the above image from the 1934 Mclelland & Stewart (Toronto) edition. It had been my father’s book when he was a child. Interestingly, it is one of the few books from my original library that survived a catastrophic flooding of my home seven years ago.
Beautiful Joe is a novel written from the point of view of a dog who has lived a long, happy life after a miserable start at the hands of a sadistic owner. It can be compared to Black Beauty for this reason. In fact, Joe mentions Black Beauty, without actually naming him: “I have seen my mistress laughing and crying over a little book that she says is a story of a horse’s life, and sometimes she puts the book down close to my nose to let me see the pictures.”
The book was first published in 1894 and the author, to disguise her womanhood, published under the name Marshall Saunders. The inspiration for the story came from a real life experience. When Margaret Saunders, A Nova Scotian, visited her brother and his family in Meaford, Ontario, she heard that a local dog had been rescued from its cruel owner after having its ears and tail cut off. She was so moved that she began writing the novel that has become a worldwide classic. As Saunders set the story in Maine, and made no reference to the Canadian origin of the tale, I never knew that Joe was based on a real dog who lived an hour’s drive away from my family’s cottage at Oliphant, Ontario. I read Beautiful Joe on the shores of Lake Huron a short journey from the hero’s real life home. Of course, the original Joe would have been long gone by then, but it would have been very meaningful to me at that time to have known.
By today’s standards the tale is slow and fairly sentimental. It reads at times like an advertisement for the Humane Society. But for true animal lovers, especially dog lovers, it is as fulfilling as sitting with your favorite dog by the hearth fire. The story is from another time, but I have not grown tired of it. The town of Meaford, Ontario has established the Beautiful Joe Heritage Society whose vision is to establish “an International Tourist Attraction/Heritage Site that promotes values and ethics through the telling of Beautiful Joe by Margaret Marshall Saunders.”
Revisiting Beautiful Joe is timely for me as I have recently adopted a dog through New Hope Dog Rescue of Saskatoon. China is a Japanese Spaniel mix with a beautiful temperament, but full of spunk nonetheless. She has settled into our family as if she has always belonged to us. I know that smacks of sentimentality, but anyone crazy about dogs and doggyness will understand.
