This Preliminary Bibliography and Database of Canadian Theatre Reviews 1900-1992 was made possible by a grant in 1989 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Anton Wagner for a project entitled "Canadian Theatre Criticism: English Canada." The grant enabled twenty-seven Canadian theatre historians at seventeen universities across the country to analyze the history and practice of theatre criticism in English Canada from the late 1700s to 1992. For more details on the grant, click here.

SSHRC funding provided project participants with research assistants to assemble a computer inventory and selected hard copies of reviews from microfilm. These reviews then provided the data which contributors analyzed to write major essays about the practice of theatre criticism, the critical aesthetic, and the impact of critics on live theatre and dramatic writing. In 1999 the University of Toronto Press published Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism, edited by Anton Wagner, consisting of 18 essays that resulted from this research project. The project also generated a bibliography of newspaper criticism and commentary which constitutes the more than 20,000 entries in this search engine. Proofreading of this data is an ongoing project.

The search engine for this site was designed and created with infinite patience from the raw data files by Stephen Sloan, of the University of New Brunswick. Its search capacities were augmented through the binary talents and wisdom of Jason Nugent, the Senior Systems Analyst at UNB's Electronic Text Centre.