Canada did not officially become a country until 1867, so it has had a relatively short period to develop a distinctive literature of its own. Before Callaghan arrived on the scene in the late 1920s, few Canadian short-story writers had achieved any distinction. As Walter Allen points out in The Short Story in English, most pre-1920s Canadian literature also dealt either with pastoral life or with life in the wild, neither of which theme interested Callaghan, who grew up in an urban area.

The best respected Canadian literary predecessor to Callaghan is usually considered to be Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947). Scott was aware of the work of the best European writers of his time, such as Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, which enabled him to produce work of above-average quality. Scott's best-known work of the three short story collections he published...