The essays collected in this volume offer a range of different approaches to the significance of the work of Margaret Laurence, historical, feminist, descriptive and thematic, in which critics from Europe, America and Canada offer assessments of this 20th century novelist.

"Planted firmly in some soil" - Margaret Laurence and the Canadian tradition in fiction, Clara Thomas; "leave the dead some room to dance!" - Margaret Laurence and Africa, David Richards; "some truer image" - a reading of "The Stone Angel", Shirley Chew; images in stones, images in words - Margaret Laurence's "The Stone Angel", Simone Vauthier; "All that happens, one must try to understand" - the kindredness of Tillie Olson's "Tell me a Riddle" and Margaret Laurence's "The Stone Angel", Michael Peterman; double is trouble - twins in "A Jest of God", Elizabeth Waterston; weaving fabrications - women's narratives in "A Jest of God" and "The Fire-Dwellers", Coral Ann Howells; identity in "The Fire-Dwellers", Nancy Bailey; the realism of Laurence's semi-autobiographical fiction, Peter Easingwood; consolation and articulation in Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners", Lynette Hunter; acknowledging myths - the image of Europe in Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners" and Jack Hodgins' "The Invention of the World", John Thieme; "there and not there" - aspects of Scotland in Laurence, Colin Nicholson; Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners" - the uses of the past, Gayle Greene; Caliban's revolt - the discourse of the (M)other, Barbara Godard; Margaret Laurence's Manawaka - a Canadian Yoknapatawpha, Greta M.K.Coger.