Long Fiction:
Jalna, 1927
Whiteoaks of Jalna, 1929
Finch’sFortune, 1931
The Master of Jalna, 1933
Young Renny, 1935
Whiteoak Harvest, 1936
Growth of a Man, 1938
Whiteoak Heritage, 1940
Wakefield’s Course, 1941
The Building of Jalna, 1944
Return to Jalna, 1946
Mary Wakefield, 1949
Renny’s Daughter, 1951
The Whiteoak Brothers: Jalna–1923, 1953
Variable Winds at Jalna, 1954
Centenary at Jalna, 1958
Morning at Jalna, 1960
Short Fiction:
The Sacred Bullock, 1939
A Boy in the House, 1952
Selected Stories, 1979
Drama:
Low Life, and Other Plays, pb. 1929
Whiteoaks, pr., pb. 1936
Nonfiction:
Ringing the Changes: An Autobiography, 1971
Sixteen of the twenty-three novels by Mazo de la Roche (duh luh RAWSH) describe life at Jalna, a fictional estate in Canada where an isolated and self-contained family lives in an old tradition with old values. Her novels have maintained a steady and loyal public for whom her self-contained world has come to represent a valuable and important island in the midst of the modern world; she is also credited with helping to move Canadian literature away from sentimentality and toward realism.
De la Roche first reached a wide public in 1927 when Jalna won a $10,000 prize given by The Atlantic Monthly. With accuracy, grace, and introspective insight, she first depicted the family and the world which were to serve as the basis for much of her future work. Other typical novels dealing with Jalna are Whiteoaks of Jalna, Finch’s Fortune, Young Renny, Whiteoak Harvest, Growth of a Man, The Building of Jalna, and Mary Wakefield–the last showing the impingement of the outside world, in the form of a governess, on people and events at Jalna. The popularity of de la Roche’s work can be demonstrated by the fact that a dramatized version of Whiteoaks of Jalna was highly successful in New York and ran for two years in London.
Born near Toronto and living in rural Ontario, de la Roche preferred the same quiet isolation that characterizes Jalna. Although she also lived in England and in Sicily with her cousin and their two adopted children, Esme and Renée, she managed to maintain in her work a consistent Canadian flavor and self-sufficiency. In de la Roche’s novels, her family may have its turbulent and dramatic moments, but the values of family, propriety, and independence remain supreme.