Edward Morley Callaghan was a Canadian writer and performer who lived from February 22, 1903, to August 25, 1990. He wrote novels, short stories, and plays, and also worked in television and radio.
Biography
Morley Callaghan was born in Toronto, Ontario, to parents of Canadian and English descent. As a young man, he played baseball for a coach named Bob Abate and pitched for Abate’s Arlington team. He attended Withrow Public School, Riverdale Collegiate Institute, the University of Toronto, and Osgoode Hall Law School. He worked as a law apprentice and was admitted to the bar, but he did not practice law. In the 1920s, he worked at the Toronto Star, where he became friends with Ernest Hemingway, a reporter who had previously worked at The Kansas City Star. Callaghan began writing stories that were well received and soon became known as one of the best short story writers of his time. In 1929, he spent several months in Paris, where he joined a group of famous writers, including Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce.
Callaghan’s novels and short stories often include themes related to Roman Catholicism and focus on individuals with strong but sometimes weakened senses of self. His first novel was Strange Fugitive (1928), followed by many short stories, novellas, and novels. He published little between 1937 and 1950, but wrote many non-fiction articles for magazines like New World and National Home Monthly. A story titled Luke Baldwin’s Vow, about a boy and his dog, was first published in Saturday Evening Post in 1947 and later became a popular book read in schools worldwide. His book The Loved and the Lost (1951) won the Governor General’s Award. Later works include The Many Colored Coat (1960), A Passion in Rome (1961), A Fine and Private Place (1975), A Time for Judas (1983), Our Lady of the Snows (1985), and A Wild Old Man on the Road (1988). His short stories were collected in The Lost and Found Stories of Morley Callaghan (1985) and The New Yorker Stories (2001). A four-volume collection titled The Complete Stories (2003) includes 90 of his stories.
Callaghan contributed articles to magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Maclean’s, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, Yale Review, New World, Performing Arts in Canada, and Twentieth Century Literature.
He married Loretto Dee and had two sons: Michael (born November 1931) and Barry (born 1937), who became a poet and author. Barry’s book Barrelhouse Kings (1998) discusses his own career and that of his father. Callaghan lived longer than most of his contemporaries and died at age 87 after a short illness in Toronto. He was buried in Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery in Ontario.
In 1960, he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal. In 1982, he was named a Companion of the Order of Canada. A CBC Television program titled Life and Times and a mini-series called Hemingway Vs. Callaghan (2003) explored his life and work.
From 1951 until his death in 1990, Callaghan lived in the Rosedale area of Toronto at 20 Dale Avenue. A historic plaque near the Glen Road footbridge honors his writing career and mentions other famous writers of his time, including Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In 2003, to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Library of Canada, Canada Post released a stamp series titled The Writers of Canada. Callaghan was featured on one of the English-Canadian stamps in this collection.