Letters of Marshall McLuhan

Inspiring correspondence from the originator of “The Medium Is the Message,” available for the first time in over 25 years

Called an “oracle” and a “sage,” Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) became one of the most famous men of the sixties and seventies. His reputation as a groundbreaking communications theorist was established by his many books, including The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), and The Medium Is the Massage (1967), and his work earned him a cult-like following that’s still devoted to this day.

The letters in this collection—which in the early years provide a fascinating background to McLuhan’s life and intellectual growth—are filled with discussions of ideas that altered people’s understanding of many aspects of the electronic age they live in. They reveal not only the amiability of a man who earned the friendship and respect of many outstanding people, but also his staggering knowledge of the great writers and thinkers of the past and present, which inspired him to become his time’s most renowned interpreter. Collectively, these letters offer a readable and comprehensible gloss on the ideas that made McLuhan’s name. His correspondents—distinguished scholars and colleagues, celebrated politicians, famous journalists, and stars of popular culture—range from Ann Landers to Tom Wolfe to Susan Sontag to Jimmy Carter.

This rich and varied collection of over 400 letters is an important contribution to the cultural history of the twentieth century and paints a fascinating portrait of a man who exerted a singular influence throughout the western world.

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 Marhsall 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.