| Main entry | de la Roche, Mazo |
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| Birth place | Newmarket, Ontario |
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| Birth date | 15 January 1879 |
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| Death place | Toronto, Ontario |
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| Death date | 12 July 1961 |
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| Identifier | 0423 |
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| Birth name | Mazo Louise Roche |
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| Marital status | single |
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| Religious affiliation | Anglican |
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| Paid work | novelist |
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| Biography | Mazo Louise Roche (1879-1961) was born at her maternal grandparents home in Newmarket, Ontario to a sickly mother and a wayward father of Irish descent. She reinvented herself, however, by resuscitating her supposedly lost French ancestry and the surname "de la Roche", later achieving an illustrious life in baronial manors in England and Canada. After attending Parkdale Collegiate, the Metropolitan School of Music, the University of Toronto, and Ontario School of Art in Toronto, Mazo left the city with her family and moved to a fruit and stock farm west of Toronto, in Rochedale. Although she published her first story in MUNSEY'S in 1902, it wasn't until Mazo's father died and she recovered from anxiety problems that she returned to Toronto to start her career as a writer. Her life-long companion and helpmate was her second cousin Caroline Clement (1878-1972). Because of their parents' frequent unemployment and transient housing situations, the two lived under the same roof intermittently throughout their youth, eventually buying "Trail Cottage" in Clarkson, Ontario together in the 1920s. Their neighbour, Dorothy Livesay, would later come to de la Roche's defense in posthumous literary criticism. Mazo and Caroline adopted two orphaned children in England in 1931 after a trip to Italy in 1929 had extended into a few years' stay. The women arrived back in Canada in 1933 with Esmée, René, and their nurse Caroline Kennedy, only to return for another visit to London a year later, in 1934. Mazo first achieved fame when she won the Atlantic Monthly prize for her novel JALNA (1927), the first (of a total of sixteen books) in a series about the Whiteoaks of Jalna, an Ontario land-owning dynasty. The success of the saga made her one of the most popular novelists of the twentieth century, with Jalna appearing on stage in 1936 and as a television adaptation byTimothy Findley in the 1970s. Although Mazo published on other subjects—children's books, novels, autobiography—she was unable to match the success of the 'Jalna' books, despite her own waning interest in the series. Overall, she produced twenty-three novels and over fifty stories and plays, as well as one non-fiction book (QUEBEC, HISTORIC SEAPORT) which was commissioned by Doubleday Press in the war years. In 1947, she was designated a "Person of National Historical Significance" by the Government of Canada for her literary production. Suffering from poor health for several years, Mazo died in 1961 and was buried at St. George's Anglican Church Cemetery in Sibbald Point near Sutton, Ontario. The grave accompanies that of Caroline Clement. |
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| Travel | Italy, 1929; England 1933; England, 1934 |
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| Other notes | While several accounts suggest that she was born "Maisie Roche," her name appears as "Mazo Louise Roche" on the Ontario birth registry—"Maisie" was perhaps a childhood nickname. H. R. MacMillan (1885-1976) was Mazo's cousin and the inspiration for GROWTH OF A MAN (1938). Parks Canada and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board placed a plaque at Mazo's Trail Cottage in 2008. |
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| Honours and awards | Award for "Low Life," Montreal Poetry Contest ($50) (Canadian Authors Association, 1925); Award for "Low Life," ($100) ( Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, 1925); Honourable mention for "Come True," Montreal Poetry Contest (Canadian Authors Association, 1926); Award for unknown work, $10,000 Award (THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 1927); Winner for "Good Friday," Short Story Contest (MACLEAN'S, 1927); Designated a Person of National Historical Significance (1947) |
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| Residences | Newmarket, Ontario (1879-); Toronto, Ontario (1885-1888); Orillia, Simcoe, Ontario (1888-1891); Galt, Ontario (1891-); Orillia (1892-); Parkdale, Toronto, Ontario (1894-); Acton, Ontario (1905-1910); Rochedale, near Bronte, Ontario (1911-1915); Toronto (1915-); Trail Cottage, Clarkson, Ontario (1924-1928); Toronto (-1929); Italy (1929); The Rectory, Hawkchurch, Devon, England (1931-1933); Toronto (1933-1934); Malvern Hills, England (1934-1937); Vale House, Windsor, England (1937-1938); Toronto (1939-1961)
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| Geographic regions | England; Ontario |
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| Primary genres | drama; fiction; life-writing |
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| Books | EXPLORERS OF THE DAWN (1922); POSSESSION (1923); LOW LIFE: A COMEDY IN ONE ACT (1925); DELIGHT (1926); COME TRUE (1927); JALNA (1927); WHITEOAKS OF JALNA (1929); LOW LIFE AND OTHER PLAYS (1929); THE RETURN OF THE EMIGRANT (1929); PORTRAIT OF A DOG (1930); FINCH'S FORTUNE (1931); LARK ASCENDING (1932); THE THUNGER OF NEW WINGS (1932); THE MASTER OF JALNA (1933); BESIDE A NORMAN TOWER (1934); YOUNG RENNY (1935); WHITEOAKS: A PLAY (1936); WHITEOAK HARVEST (1936); THE VERY HOUSE (1937); GROWTH OF A MAN (1938); THE SACRED BULLOCK, AND OTHER STORIES OF ANIMALS (1939); WHITEOAK HERITAGE (1940); WHITEOAK CHRONICLES (1940); WHITEOAK HERITAGE (1940); WAKEFIELD'S COURSE (1941); THE TWO SAPLINGS (1942); QUEBEC: HISTORIC SEAPORT (1942); THE BUILDING OF JALNA (1944); RETURN TO JALNA (1946); MARY WAKEFIELD (1949); RENNY'S DAUGHTER (1951); A BOY IN THE HOUSE (1952); A BOY IN THE HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES (1952); THE WHITEOAK BROTHERS, JALNA-1923 (1953);VARIABLE WINDS AT JALNA (1954); THE SONG OF LAMBERT (1955); RINGING THE CHANGES (1957); BILL AND COO (1958); CENTENARY AT JALNA (1958); MORNING AT JALNA (1960); SELECTED STORIES OF MAZO DE LA ROCHE (1979) |
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| Periodicals | ATLANTIC MONTHLY; BYSTANDER; CANADIAN AUTHOR AND BOOKMAN; CANADIAN FORUM; CANADIAN HOME JOURNAL; CANADIAN MAGAZINE; CANADIAN NATION; ECHOES; HARPER'S BAZAAR; LONDON MERCURY; MACLEAN'S; METROPOLITAN; MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE; WOMEN'S HOME COMPANION |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Brooks, ONE-ACT PLAYS (1926); Garvin, CANADIAN POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR (1918); Lord, PLAYS FOR SCHOOL AND CAMP (1922); Pacey, BOOK OF CANADIAN STORIES (1947) |
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| Father's name | William Richmond Roche |
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| Life dates of father | c1848 Ontario - 1 July 1915 Ontario; m. 1877 |
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| Father's note | salesman |
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| Mother's name | Alberta Louise Lundy |
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| Life dates of mother | 10 April 1854 Ontario - 1920; m. 1877 |
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| Mother's note | carpenter; died of influenza |
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| Spouse 1 | Caroline Clement |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 4 April 1878, Innisfil Township, Ontario - 3 August 1972, USA |
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| Spouse 1 note | Life companion; specific nature of relationship not indicated by either woman |
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| Children number | 2 |
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| Children's names and dates | Two adopted orphans:
Esmée Verschoyle de la Roche, born "Margaret Elizabeth Andrews Tester" (11 November 1928 - ), m. to Mr. Rees
René Richmond de la Roche (12 June 1930 - 1984), m. to Bianca |
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| Biographical references | Dictionary of Literary Biography 68; Givner, MAZO DE LA ROCHE: THE HIDDEN LIFE (Toronto: Oxford University Press 1989); Mazo de la Roche Society; Kirk, MAZO DE LA ROCHE: RICH AND FAMOUS WRITER (2006); New, "de la Roche, Mazo," in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LITERATURE IN CANADA (2002), p. 283; 1881 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935; Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913; UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 271-73, 431-32, 491, 611, 958 |
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| Research references | complete; 02 |
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| Archival references | Manuscripts and correspondence, Canadian Literature Collections, Fisher Library, University of Toronto; miscellaneous, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; correspondence and manuscripts, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; letter, Dorothy Livesay papers, Queen's University Archives; University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver; ; letters, Margaret Cowie fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC; diaries (1938-1945; 1959) and memorabilia in the Mazo de la Roche Gallery, Mississauga Museums; programme for dinner in her honour, Newton McTavish papers, North York Public Library; correspondence, Grace Fairburn papers, Baldwin Room, Metropolitan Toronto Library |
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| Image credits | Image courtesy of the Archives of Ontario. Taken by Melvin Ormond Hammond, 18 December 1927. |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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