FROM THE PUBLISHER

Frederick Philip Grove's Autobiography In Search of Myself won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction in 1947. Yet the details of his early life are anything but clear. In this remarkably rich portrait of the author's life and milieu, Klaus Martens follows Grove's alter ego, Felix Paul Greve, from aa mysterious period in Germany as a student and translator to his new identity as F.P. Grove, a teacher and writer in Canada.

Originally from a working-class background, the young Greve sought to establish himself among wealthy writers and archaeologists in Bonn, Munich and Berlin. He racked up large debts living as a nomadic intellectual, never quite finding the recognition he desired. Eventually he found steady work as a literary translator, with mixed success. Before fleeing for the New World in 1909, he played a seminal role in introducing Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Andre Gide and other early moderns to German readers.

Drawing on previously unavailable evidence, Martens offers detailed accounts of the circles in which Greve moved. More importantly, he shows how Grove translated his own past into the autobiographical epics A Search for America and In Search of Myself. Through new readings of these and Greve's little-known German writings, Martens speculates on the real-life sources for many of Grove's "fictional" characters and scenarios.