GALT, JOHN

born May 2, 1779, Irvine, Ayrshire, Scot. died April 11, 1839, Greenock, Renfrewshire prolific Scottish novelist admired for his depiction of country life. Galt settled in London in 1804. Commissioned by a merchant firm to establish trade agreements, he travelled to the Mediterranean area, where he met the poet Byron, with whom he travelled to Malta and later to Athens. (In 1830 he published Life of Lord Byron.) Other commercial ventures took him to France and The Netherlands (1814) and to Canada (1826). He opened up a road between Lakes Huron and Erie through the forest country and founded the city of Guelph in Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1827. His position with the Canada Land Company was undermined by enemies, and he returned home practically a ruined man. All his life he had been a voluminous writer, and he now devoted himself entirely to literature. His masterpieces are The Ayrshire Legatees (1820), The Annals of the Parish (1821), Sir Andrew Wylie (1822), The Provost (1822), The Entail (1823), and Lawrie Todd (1830), novels of Scottish rural life that foreshadowed the Kailyard (kitchen garden) school (q.v.) of fiction of the late 19th century. The Ayrshire Legatees tells, in the form of letters to their friends in Scotland, the adventures of the Rev. Pringle and his family in London. The Annals of the Parish, told by the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, Galt's finest character, is a humorous and truthful picture of the old-fashioned Scottish pastor and the life of a country parish. And in the novel Lawrie Todd the hard life of a Canadian settler is depicted with imaginative power.