Haliburton, Thomas Chandler

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler (hăl`ĭbûrtən), pseud. Sam Slick, 1796–1865, Canadian jurist and author. Haliburton was a judge of the court of common pleas in 1829 and a judge of the provincial supreme court in 1841; he retired in 1856. He then moved to England, where he was a member of the House of Commons from 1859 until his death. His Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia (1829) was the first history of that province. Haliburton's most popular work was a series about the sayings and doings of Sam Slick, which he began in the Nova Scotian; they were collected in The Clockmaker (1836). He continued writing about this humorous Yankee clock peddler, a medium for satirizing both Canadians and Americans, in The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England (1843–44) and Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances (1853). Haliburton also wrote other humorous and historical works.

Bibliography

See his letters ed. by R. A. Davies (1988).

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Haliburton, Thomas Chandler

(born Dec. 17, 1796, Windsor, Nova Scotia—died Aug. 27, 1865, Isleworth, Middlesex, Eng.) Canadian writer. He served in the legislature of his native Nova Scotia and later served as a judge of the Supreme Court (1841–54), where he maintained the strong conservatism that informs his writings. He moved to England in 1856 and was a member of Parliament from 1859 until his death. He is best known for creating the character Sam Slick, a Yankee clock peddler and cracker-barrel philosopher whose escapades first appeared in the newspaper Nova Scotian and were later published in The Clockmaker (1836, 1838, 1840) and other volumes.