Emily Carr

Emily Carr worked across Canadian painting and literature, and her accounts of British Columbia connect artistic development with travel, work, and changing ideas about landscape. Growing Pains is the shortened title of Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr, completed shortly before her death in 1945. Oxford University Press first issued it in Canada during 1946. The book traces her childhood in Victoria, art training abroad, difficult early exhibitions, and the long periods when public recognition remained uncertain. Carr writes candidly about family expectations, financial pressure, encounters with other artists, and her effort to find a visual language suited to the forests and coastal communities of western Canada. Ira Dilworth supplied the original foreword and helped bring her late manuscripts into print. Later Douglas & McIntyre editions introduced the autobiography to new readers. Growing Pains complements Carr’s story collections and journals by showing how persistence, doubt, and disciplined observation shaped both her writing and her painting.