The Precipice

John Hugh MacLennan was born in Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia on March 20, 1907. He was educated at Dalhousie University, Oxford University, and Princeton University. He taught English at Lower Canada College and McGill University.

His first book, Barometer Rising, was published in 1941. His other works included Each Man's Son, Return of the Sphinx, Voices in Time, and The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan. He won the Governor General's Literary Award three times for fiction for Two Solitudes, The Precipice, and The Watch that Ends the Night and twice for nonfiction for Cross-Country and Thirty and Three. He also won a Royal Bank Award in 1984 and in 1987 he became the first Canadian to receive Princeton University's James Madison Medal. He died on November 7, 1990.

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