Frederick Philip Grove

Frederick Philip Grove (born 1871, Russia—died Aug. 19, 1948, Simcoe, Ont., Can.) was a Canadian novelist whose fame rests on sombre naturalistic works that deal frankly and realistically with pioneer life on the Canadian prairies.

Grove grew up in Sweden, travelled widely in Europe as a youth, and attended European universities. On a visit to Canada in 1892, he was left stranded there by his father’s sudden death. He worked as an itinerant farm labourer (1892–1912), as a teacher in Manitoba (1912–24), and as an editor in Ottawa before retiring to a farm near Simcoe. Grove’s series of prairie novels, Our Daily Bread (1928), The Yoke of Life (1930), and Fruits of the Earth (1933), were most successful. Though somewhat stiff in style and clumsy in construction, they live by virtue of the honesty of Grove’s vision. Grove also wrote two books of essays on prairie life and an autobiography, In Search of Myself (1946).