SOURCE: Kelly, Darlene. “Thomas Haliburton & Travel Books About America.” Canadian Literature, no. 94 (autumn 1982): 25-38.

In the following essay, Kelly examines the ways in which Haliburton capitalized on the popularity of the travel book and used it as a medium for expressing his own political views regarding Canadian, American, and British relations.

Thomas Haliburton's observations on British travel commentaries about America reward examination on several counts. First, they are valuable historically, recreating for the modern reader a phase of Anglo-American relations when these analyses of America renewed hostilities between two nations recently at war. Also, they point up Haliburton's interest in the format of travel writing itself and his adaptation of it in books as diverse as the Account of Nova Scotia, the Clockmaker and Attaché series, and other humorous works like The Letter-Bag of the Great Western, The Old Judge, and The Season Ticket. They reveal as well...