Victor Canning pages: Home Life Works Background News, links and publications Back to Higgins Home Page
The Victor Canning pages
These pages celebrate the work of Victor Canning (1911 - 1986), a writer of sixty-one books altogether, including one travel book, eighteen novels both comic and serious, four historical novels set in Roman and Arthurian Britain, three children's books, two short story collections (plus an abundance of other stories) and thirty-three thrillers, the best of which are some of the finest ever written in this genre.
Canning in 1938 with his dogs Polycarp and Abigail
Under Life is an introduction for new readers, a short biography, a list of the places where he lived, and a set of portraits.
Under Works you will find a full bibliography including his work for stage, film, TV and radio, with prefaces to all of the books and summaries of all the surviving short stories.
Under Background you will find a collection of brief quotations from Canning's books on a range of subjects, extracts about what became for him a major hobby, fishing, citations from and references to major poets (he was fond of poetry), descriptions of food and cooking (in case you want to assemble a Canning celebration dinner), and a list of the settings of the
novels and stories. I have also created a page about citations from Canning's books in the Oxford English Dictionary, lists of
the books he enjoyed himself and recommended to his sister, and a list of articles about Victor Canning, mostly from newspapers..
Click News, links and publications to see items on the deaths of Richard Griffiths, Dinah Sheridan and Kate O'Mara, all of whom had strong associations with Canning adaptations, along with explorations of the background to the books, where to
find the books (updated December 2017), and how we marked Canning's centenary in June 2011.
Click on this link to find the Victor Canning page at Curtis Brown, the agency who look after the rights to his work.
Fifteen pre-war books by Canning which were published through the print-on-demand service Lulu.com have now been withdrawn, but four collections of short stories are still available via this channel, along with four Companions providing background material and indexes of characters, locations and themes. Click on these links to order direct from Lulu.com.
These books from other publishers are in print:
the third of the Rex Carver series The Python Project, November 2012.
New edition by Arcturus Publishing of the first of the Rex Carver series The Whip Hand, July 2011.
Newly published by Ostara Press in November 2010, Canning's masterpiece The Rainbird Pattern.
England, July 2011.
And fifteen more titles from Bello. Details on individual book pages.