Earlier treatments of Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Left to Themselves (1891) have performed the crucial tasks of arguing for its importance in literary history as well as examining some of its formal innovations. Our article, which inevitably drew inspiration from the creation of this map, advances scholarship by attending to its treatment of places. In the novel, the young protagonists Philip Touchtone and Gerald Saxton embark on an eventful journey from New York to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Along the way, they encounter all sorts of perils from attempted kidnapping to actual shipwrecks. Philip’s and Gerald’s perceptions, and their engagements with space, we suggest, inform our understandings of them and of Stevenson’s social commentary. By analysing his project geographically, and with particular attention to a central episode that takes place in the fictional Chantico Island, our essay reveals how Stevenson turns to places to expose, to unsettle, and ultimately to (re)imagine social realities. Criticism has nevertheless overlooked Stevenson's commentary on Atlantic Canada. Indeed, the antagonist raises suspicion by misidentifying Nova Scotia as Newfoundland. This project recovers Left to Themselves’ insights into nineteenth-century Atlantic Canada, advances our understanding of Prime-Stevenson, converses with an international consortium of scholars on his writing, and situates Atlantic Canada more concretely in the area of global nineteenth-century studies.

Professor Tom Ue

Tom Ue is Assistant Professor in English of the Long Nineteenth Century at Cape Breton University and Advising Editor of The Complete Letters of Henry James (University of Nebraska Press). He is the author of Gissing, Shakespeare, and the Life of Writing (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) and George Gissing (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming); and the editor of George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). Professor Ue is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Jacob Guy Aubut 

Jacob Aubut earned his Honours degree in English Language and Literature at Saint Mary’s University, in Halifax, where he also pursued Minors in Culture, Race, and Resistance and in Dramatic Literature. Aubut’s research has concentrated on the application of spatial theory in the study of literary modernism, notably the writing of Virginia Woolf. Beyond his academic work, his interests rest in film and in the creation of art.

 Jacob Guy Aubut created this interactive map, which tracks Philip and Gerald's adventure from the United States to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The map operates as a kind of reading guide that follows the narrative, studies Philip and Gerald’s relationship to geography and space, and foregrounds Prime-Stevenson’s depiction of Atlantic Canada. 

Professor Tom Ue and I are grateful to the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University for supporting this project. I want to single out several individuals. First, I am grateful to Professor Ue for supervising my work: it has given me various skills and insights that will be invaluable to my academic future. Second, Professor Dino Felluga’s COVE mapping software has made this map possible and available to the public. Third, Eric L. Tribunella’s editorial apparatus for his landmark Valancourt Classics edition has been invaluable.  

Jacob Guy Aubut

Department of English Language and Literature

Queen's University