The Man With the Coat

In 1955, Morley Callaghan completed the manuscript of The Man With The Coat. The legendary editor of Maclean’s magazine, Ralph Allen, read that manuscript and was so enthusiastic that he created –for this one time only – a Maclean’s $5000 novel award.

The novel was published complete in one issue, April 16, 1955. After that, Callaghan did what he has often done since: he rewrote, expanded and significantly changed this work until it became The Many Colored Coat, published in 1960.

This book has since become a classic, praised by –among others– Edmund Wilson, who said it could easily be compared with Chekov and Turgenev. But the earlier version has been overlooked and forgotten, and though the characters have the same names and the thrust of the action comes out of the same situation, it is a different story with a completely different ending. So, here is a remarkable opportunity: a chance to read a book Ralph Allen said was a “tense and tender story of a terrible misunderstanding told by a great Canadian novelist”. This is literary excellence and literary history.