Duncan Campbell Scott, poet and short story writer, is one of the major Canadian literary figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First to make original and profound use of archetypally Canadian subjects, he is known for his harsh and, at their best, uncompromising narratives about Indians, fur traders, and other inhabitants of the Canadian North. Perhaps more than in the case of any other writer of his generation, his work forms a bridge between the romantic and the modern in Canadian literature.

Scott was born on 2 August 1862 in Ottawa, where he was to reside for his entire adult life. His father, the Reverend William Scott, was an immigrant from England; his mother, the former Janet Campbell MacCallum, was a native-born Canadian of Scottish background. Because his father was an itinerant minister of the Methodist church, Scott spent his childhood and received his formal education in...