The Imperialist

by Sara Jeannette Duncan, Janette Turner Hospital (Afterword)

Overview

Sara Jeannette Duncan’s classic portrait of a turn-of-the-century Ontario town, The Imperialist captures the spirit of an emergent nation through the example of two young dreamers. Impassioned by “the Imperialist idea,” Lorne Murchison rests his bid for office on his vision of a rejuvenated British Empire. His sister Advena betrays a kindred attraction to the high-flown ideals in her love for an unworldly, and unavailable, young minister. Nimbly alternating between politics and romance, Duncan constructs a superbly ironic object-lesson in the Canadian virtue of compromise.

Sympathetic, humorous, and wonderfully detailed, The Imperialist is an astute analysis of the paradoxes of Canadian nationhood, as relevant today as when the novel was first published in 1904.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551993744
Publisher:	McClelland & Stewart
Publication date:	04/30/2010
Series:	New Canadian Library
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	364
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Sara Jeannette Duncan was born in Brantford, Ontario, in 1861. She attended the Toronto Normal School, then left teaching for a career in journalism. She worked as an editorial writer and book reviewer for the Washington Post, then wrote for the Toronto Globe under the name of “Garth Grafton,” and contributed a column to whose founder was Goldwin Smith. She was also parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa for the Montreal Star.

In 1888 Duncan set off on a round-the-world trip as correspondent for the New York World and the Montreal Star. In Calcutta she met her future husband, Everard Cotes, an Englishman serving there as curator of the Indian Museum. They married two years later. Duncan lived in India for twenty-five years, with extended stays abroad in London and frequent trips to Canada.

A prolific and popular writer of fiction, Duncan set nearly half of her novels in India. The Imperialist (1904), generally considered her finest, is her only novel set in Canada. During and after World War One she devoted much of her time to playwrighting.

In 1922 Duncan and her husband retired to England.

Sara Jeannette Duncan died in Ashtead, Surrey, England in 1922.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sara Jeannette Duncan: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Imperialist

Appendix A: Personal and Domestic Contexts

1. Sara Jeannette Duncan, “[North American Indians].” The Globe (29 July 1885)
2. Sara Jeannette Duncan, “[The Old-Time Heroine].” The Week (28 October 1886)
3. A Selection of Duncan’s Letters concerning The Imperialist
4. From Sara Jeannette Duncan, “[Growing Golden-rod in Simla].” The Crow’s Nest (1901)
5. Recipes from The Canadian Home Cook Book (1887)
6. Twenty-fourth of May Celebration. The Brantford Expositor (22 May 1884)

Appendix B: Imperialism and the Tariff Question

1. “A Pertinent Question.” Diogenes (19 June 1869)
2. “The Effect of the National Policy” (c. 1891)
3. Sara Jeannette Duncan, “Imperial Sentiment in Canada.” Indian Daily News (7 October 1896)
4. From Goldwin Smith, “Commercial Union.” Canada and the Canadian Question (1891)
5. From Joseph Chamberlain, “Trade and The Empire.” Imperial Union and Tariff Reform: Speeches Delivered from May 15th to Nov. 4 1903 (1903)
6. “Hon. Geo. E. Foster Answers Sir Wilfrid Laurier” (1904)

Appendix C: Selected Reviews

1. Unsigned. “Canada and Imperial Policy.” New York Times (5 March 1904)
2. Unsigned. Times Literary Supplement (22 April 1904)
3. Unsigned. The Spectator (23 April 1904)
4. Mary K. Ford, “The Novel of the Month: Mrs. Cotes’ The Imperialist.” Current Literature (April 1904)
5. J[ean] G[raham], Saturday Night (4 June 1904)
6. Unsigned. Daily News [Toronto] (4 June 1904)
7. E. Hoyt, The Lamp (July 1904)
8. Unsigned. Canadian Magazine (July 1904)
9. Unsigned. The Globe [Toronto] (13 August 1904)

Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Despite its literary excellence, The Imperialist can be a challenging book. The thoughtful notation and well-chosen appendices of this edition do much to overcome the distance created by the passage of a century that saw dramatic changes in ideas and social expectations. Misao Dean enables us to appreciate Sara Jeannette Duncan as a sophisticated woman who adhered to some values of her day and contested others, and to admire her courage in writing a realistic novel about highly-charged political issues whose legacy affects us today.” — Carole Gerson, Simon Fraser University

From the Publisher