Joseph Howe – författare

Joseph Howe was not yet a prominent politician in 1828 but he was already developing a deep interest in the political institutions of Nova Scotia, and his love of the land and its people was innate. In that year he began publishing, in the Novascotian of which he was then editor, a series of sketches which form a literary composite of his business trips around the province, from Halifax to Digby in the west and Guysborough in the east. In these Rambles he put aside his professional preoccupations and spoke as an observer bent on recording his impressions of the landscapes, settlements, people, and character of his native province. He wrote as an urbanely perceptive editor, running the gamut for ecstatic celebration of provincial beauties and virtues to criticism, direct or oblique, of provincial shortcomings and foibles. His youthful energy and immensely attractive enthusiasm are apparent on every page.

The sketches furnish a first-hand account of the Nova Scotian countryside as it was nearly a century and a half ago. They reveal a deeply involved insider''s interpretation of provincial life, and something of the attitudes, interests, tastes, and literary talents of a famous person known directly to most people only through the more formal modes of political speech and public letter. Any well-written account of colonial times is of interest and value to a nation involved in an ever deepening study of its past; when the author happens to be Joseph Howe, a man of unusual perception and distinction, the account assumes more than ordinary stature. Howe''s non-political writing has been unduly neglected. The rescue of the Rambles from the dusty files of the Novascotian will help to right the balance.

This volume, containing a selection of the poetry and prose of Joseph Howe, presents various aspects of a fascinating man who few Canadian know as other than the ''tribune of Nova Scotia'' and a political giant of colonial times. Yet Howe was also a writer, and a good one. His intuitive grasp and pragmatic skill in political affairs were combined with wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, strong moral idealism, and a lively imagination. He revealed a vigorous strength in journalism and politics, in public life in general, and in his prose. His poetry admittedly was minor and colonial — he cultivated eighteenth-century verse models and habits of diction, which made him a second-generation Romantic in attitude and tone rather than in style — and its merit, according to David Munroe, Dalhousie Review, XX, 1941, ''lies principally in the deep sincerity which is characteristic of all good verse.'' However, to understand the man and his times it is essential to understand the full extent of his endeavours; hence the significance of this book.

The selections in this volume were assembled after Howe''s death by his ninth child, Sydenham. They include the unfinished poem ''Acadia,'' various serious and sentimental poems, five essays originally written and delivered as speeches, and a moral tale entitled ''The Locksmith of Philadelphia.''

Joseph Howe was not yet a prominent politician in 1828 but he was already developing a deep interest in the political institutions of Nova Scotia, and his love of the land and its people was innate. In that year he began publishing, in the Novascotian of which he was then editor, a series of sketches which form a literary composite of his business trips around the province, from Halifax to Digby in the west and Guysborough in the east. In these Rambles he put aside his professional preoccupations and spoke as an observer bent on recording his impressions of the landscapes, settlements, people, and character of his native province. He wrote as an urbanely perceptive editor, running the gamut for ecstatic celebration of provincial beauties and virtues to criticism, direct or oblique, of provincial shortcomings and foibles. His youthful energy and immensely attractive enthusiasm are apparent on every page.

The sketches furnish a first-hand account of the Nova Scotian countryside as it was nearly a century and a half ago. They reveal a deeply involved insider''s interpretation of provincial life, and something of the attitudes, interests, tastes, and literary talents of a famous person known directly to most people only through the more formal modes of political speech and public letter. Any well-written account of colonial times is of interest and value to a nation involved in an ever deepening study of its past; when the author happens to be Joseph Howe, a man of unusual perception and distinction, the account assumes more than ordinary stature. Howe''s non-political writing has been unduly neglected. The rescue of the Rambles from the dusty files of the Novascotian will help to right the balance.

This volume, containing a selection of the poetry and prose of Joseph Howe, presents various aspects of a fascinating man who few Canadian know as other than the ''tribune of Nova Scotia'' and a political giant of colonial times. Yet Howe was also a writer, and a good one. His intuitive grasp and pragmatic skill in political affairs were combined with wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, strong moral idealism, and a lively imagination. He revealed a vigorous strength in journalism and politics, in public life in general, and in his prose. His poetry admittedly was minor and colonial — he cultivated eighteenth-century verse models and habits of diction, which made him a second-generation Romantic in attitude and tone rather than in style — and its merit, according to David Munroe, Dalhousie Review, XX, 1941, ''lies principally in the deep sincerity which is characteristic of all good verse.'' However, to understand the man and his times it is essential to understand the full extent of his endeavours; hence the significance of this book.

The selections in this volume were assembled after Howe''s death by his ninth child, Sydenham. They include the unfinished poem ''Acadia,'' various serious and sentimental poems, five essays originally written and delivered as speeches, and a moral tale entitled ''The Locksmith of Philadelphia.''