Considering his vast and diversified literary output, as well as his colorful career as a businessman and promoter of various enterprises, it is ironic that John Galt, a Scots novelist contemporaneous with Sir Walter Scott, should be so little known...

John Galt was born in Irvine, in the county of Ayrshire, Scotland, on 2 May 1779. His father, also named John, was master of a West Indian trading vessel; Galt described him as remarkably handsome, easygoing, and trustworthy but of only modest ability....

Scottish author John Galt (1779-1839) wrote extensively during the early 1800s, producing novels as well as works of drama, poetry, art criticism, and biography. He also worked as a lobbyist and founded settlements in Canada. Galt's style of novel...

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...