All his life, Thomas Chandler Haliburton was proud of being a second-generation Nova Scotian. Haliburton's grandfather William H. Haliburton, a New England planter, settled in Nova Scotia in 1761. The grandfather's early fortunes were somewhat checkered. Haliburton's father, William Hersey Otis Haliburton, a successful lawyer, judge, businessman, and politician, placed the family fortunes on a surer footing with a prudent second marriage to Susannah Boutineau Francklin Davis, the daughter of a former lieutenant-governor of the province, Michael Francklin. W. H. O. Haliburton's first wife (Thomas Chandler Haliburton's mother), Lucy Chandler Grant Haliburton, had died in 1797, several months after Thomas was born.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton began his writing career with a description and a history of his province. Then, at the age of thirty-nine, while a circuit judge of the Inferior Court of Nova Scotia, he penned the first of several collections of comic, satiric, and descriptive sketches. The invention...