Miriam of Queen's

Published in 1921, this now out-of-print novel by Queen's alumna Lilian Vaux MacKinnon (BA 1902) tells the story of a bright young woman's adventures at Queen's at the turn of the century. The semi-autobiographical tale provides a fascinating glimpse of life at the university in the last years of George Grant's Principalship.

The novel takes the reader on a tour of the formal academic world, with its caps and gowns and high moral idealism, of Queen's playing fields and skating rinks, of Kingston's drawing rooms, and of the decorous social life of the day, in which male and female students addressed each other as Mr. and Miss.

It is melodramatic by today's standards and now almost entirely forgotten, but it was a popular and critical success in its day and went through two editions for publishers McClelland and Stewart.

MacKinnon also published several short stories about Queen's later in life.

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