SOURCE: McMullin, Stanley E. “Thomas Chandler Haliburton.” In Canadian Writers and Their Works: Essays on Form, Context, and Development: Fiction Series, Volume Two, edited by Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley, pp. 27-76. Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, 1989.

In the following excerpt, McMullin maintains that even though Haliburton's popularity waned and he was alternately labeled a British or an American writer, his Tory philosophy was primarily linked to Canadian intellectual tradition.

It seems to me that Robert L. McDougall has come closest to answering the question of why Thomas Chandler Haliburton's reputation has waned while lesser writers continue to be read by modern readers. He isolates three possible explanations in his 1959 essay on Haliburton. The first reason has to do with the arena for Haliburton's success:

Present-day accounts of the American tradition in literature assign no place to Haliburton, whose claims to be considered the founding-father of an...