Letters of Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was a Canadian philosopher who was known as "the father of media studies." Spending much of his life as a professor at the University of Toronto, McLuhan authored books such as Understanding Media and The Medium Is the Massage that transformed out collective understanding of how media operates, and he is regularly cited as one of the preeminent social theorists of our time.

William Toye (1926-2024)was the general editor of the first edition of The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature and co-editor of the second edition. He wrote The St Lawrence (1959) and William Toye on Canadian Literature (2005); edited the popular anthology The Book of Canada (1962); co-edited, with Robert Weaver, The Oxford Anthology of Canadian Literature (2nd edn, 1981); and was a founding editor of The Tamarack Review. He was editorial director of Oxford University Press Canada from 1969 until his retirement in 1991. In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Canada, in 1996 he received an honorary M.A. from Oxford University, and in 2004 he was given an honorary doctorate by Victoria College, University of Toronto.

Matie Molinaro (1922-2015) graduated from Columbia University. In World War II, Molinaro served with the Red Cross and later with the Office of War Information in Algiers, Naples, Rome, and Trieste, as a war correspondent of the United States Army. She later settled in Toronto, where she worked as an editor for Maclean's magazine. In 1950 Molinaro founded the Canadian Speakers' and Writers' Service, a literary agency and a personal management company for writers, speakers and actors.

Corinne McLuhan (1912-2008) was the wife and confidante of Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Corinne undertook graduate work in theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse, which is where she met her future husband, Marshall McLuhan. Corinne and Marshall married in 1939 and had six children.