The Canadian Don Quixote 
The Life and Works of Major John Richardson

John Richardson's life, like his novels, had its dark side. Victim of both economic circumstances and personal weaknesses, Richardson bounced from place to place and job to job, embroiled in litigation, addicted to gambling, engaged in dueling, but always writing. Critics still debate the worth of his work, but all agree as to its importance in laying the foundations of Canadian literature. The author of Wacousta and The Canadian Brothers may not have been heroic, but he had an adventurous, energetic life, as this biography so well reveals. Author David Beasley traces Richardson's story with both readable style and reliable research. This new, revised edition of a work first published and widely reviewed in 1977 may well prompt a fresh look at Richardson. Four lesser known Richardson novels are also available from the publisher.

Chris Raible, OHS Bulletin, Toronto

It was in 1963 when David Beasley located, in the John Askin Papers, a footnote referring to a Canadian novelist, Major John Richardson, who died of starvation in New York City on 12 May 1852. Intrigued, Beasley began researching this individual in order to discover who this early Canadian author was and what he wrote. The result of his vast and exhaustive research was first published in hard copy in 1977. This new release of the biography of Major John Richardson, together with three of Richardson's history-based novels, is now available from the above publisher.

Like Thomas Hardy, John Richardson narrates events based on a character flaw that dictates the outcome of the story almost fatalistically. Like Sir Walter Scott, the author narrates events and the story line up to a critical point through the eyes of one set of characters, then returns in the next chapter to pick up the thread of another set of characters.

While his books and serial newspaper stories were not successful in his lifetime, Richardson's work is worthy of our notice, if only to compare with our own knowledge of the principal wars of the nineteenth century, the life of risk and danger in the gambling salons of Paris and the rough backwoods challenges of Upper Canada before 1850. Unlike Anne Langton, Susannah Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, who wrote in diary form reporting life and life skills, Richardson wrote to report through real characters, fictionalized but recognizable, in a realistic story set in a harsh and unrelenting physical world. Always interested in moral lessons and justice, Richardson "rights the record" of more than one soldier killed unjustly in battle.

Richardson's work, and consequently Beasley's work, has to be praised for attention to detail, the ability to put a scene before our eyes and an adherence to truth that allows the reader to watch in his own mind's eye a battle scene unfold with heroic and grisly scenes between North American Indians, Patriots and Loyalists. While dates are few in Richardson's novels, the knowledgeable reader with an historical background might find these republished novels interesting for their frank and honest messages.

Reviewed by Grietje R. McBride, UE, B.Sc