One of the earliest Upper Canadian novelists, Abraham S. Holmes was the son of Rev. Ninian Holmes, a Methodist minister who had retired from the Detroit circuit to teach and farm in Upper Canada (Ontario), and of his wife, Elizabeth, née Newkirk, daughter of one of the earliest settlers in the Western District. Abraham was probably born on their farm in Raleigh Township in 1821. The year can only be deduced by counting backward from the age he gave to census takers in later life.

Holmes's one novel and the few poems and letters to the editor scattered through the Chatham Gleaner and the Western Herald are all youthful works. He is not known to have published anything after 1846. Like so many other young Canadian men of his time, Holmes seems to have stopped writing when he began his professional career. He settled in Chatham, where he...