Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Thomas Chandler Haliburton , 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).

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler (1796–1865), born at Windsor, Nova Scotia. As a writer he became known for his The Clockmaker; or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville (1836; London, 1837), a satirical and humorous work of fiction. It was followed by other works in the same series designed to stimulate political reform through the satirical observations of the character of Sam Slick, a Yankee from Ohio.