Inverting the usual pattern of things, Philippe-Ignace-François Aubert de Gaspé fils was instrumental in starting his father's literary career, with their collaboration on L'Influence d'un livre (1837), the first novel written in French Canada. With its embedded narratives from the oral tradition and its historical aim, this novel also inaugurated the dominant mode of nineteenth-century Quebec fiction. These strains reached a high degree of finish and attained great popular success in one of the best-loved Quebec classics, Les Anciens Canadiens (1863), the work of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé père.

Through both his parents--Pierre-Ignace-François and Catherine Tarien de Lanaudière Aubert de Gaspé--Philippe-Joseph belonged to the most illustrious aristocratic families in Canada. Conscious of this tradition, he became one of its most authoritative recorders in his historical fiction and memoirs. Born at the family manor of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, he was sent...