Novel
The Imperialist
Sara Jeannette Duncan · 1904
Opening lines
It would have been idle to inquire into the antecedents, or even the circumstances, of old Mother Beggarlegs.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Elgin, a small town in Ontario, at the turn of the century. John Murchison, a hardware merchant from Scotland, has kept a shop there for thirty years. His son Lorne, a young lawyer, goes to London as secretary of a trade delegation and comes back won over to the idea of preferential trade within the Empire; he stands under this banner, for the Liberals, in a by-election. His sister Advena, who reads and thinks, becomes attached to Hugh Finlay, a young Scottish minister at the mission, engaged before his departure to a woman who stayed in Scotland.
Context
Written for the most part in India and revised after a stay in Canada in the autumn of 1903, the book appeared as a serial in a London magazine and a Toronto daily, then as a volume in 1904 in New York, London and Toronto, under the author's married name. Elgin is Brantford, and the election campaign in the story takes up the debate on imperial preference that Joseph Chamberlain was then leading in England. The reception in 1904 was divided. Reissued in 1961 in the New Canadian Library, the novel has become a classic studied at university.
Who it is for
A novel in which the election campaign and the debate on imperial trade occupy a large place; annotated editions provide the context.
Prizes and reception
It is her only novel set in Canada, and the one on which most of her reputation rests; it is studied in the country's universities.
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