Annals of the Parish (1821) was the Scottish novel that established John Galt as a major proponent of regional realism; along with books such as Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village (1824), Annals offered a model for early Canadian sketch writers such as Susanna Moodie. John Galt contributed more directly to early Canadian literature with Bogle Corbet (1831); the third volume of this novel, set in southwestern Ontario, combines the ironic perspective of the Annals with details drawn from Galt's experience as colonizer in the 1820s. Galt's Autobiography (1833) is another essential source for students of politics, landscape, and the daily management of life in the Canadas.

John Galt was born on 2 May 1779 at Irvine, in west-coast Scotland, the son of John and Jean Thomson Galt. His father was a sea captain, and young John was early apprenticed to business in Greenock, in spite of a childhood flair for writing blank-verse tragedies. He...