Bogle Corbet: Or the Emigrants

The first scholarly edition of Bogle Corbet

Includes explanatory notes and a glossary of Scots vocabulary

Three maps locate the novel’s key transits and locales

A detailed introduction lays out much of the historical background to the novel’s four key locations (Glasgow; London; Jamaica; Upper Canada)

Includes detailed overview of the novel’s original 1831 reception; its rediscovery in the 1950s-70s, and current scholarly debates about the novel

Includes an appendix excerpting key 1831 reviews and documents from the novel’s belated Canadian revival

Through the life-story of its eloquent but depressive narrator, Bogle Corbet links the industrial revolution in Scotland to the French Revolution, Jamaica’s plantation economy to the settlement of English Canada. A pioneering industrial novel, colonial novel, and world systems novel, Bogle Corbet also offers an early psychological portrait of emigrant experience. Galt’s vivid vignettes show Britain and key British colonies at moments of political unrest and transition, and explore the ambivalences of a world newly governed by industrialism, capitalism, globalisation, and mass displacement. Galt’s novel thus remains a work for our own times, even as it offers important transcontinental insights into a key historical juncture. It has inspired eloquent champions (both nineteenth- and twentieth-century) and continues to spark critical debate.

Reviews of Bogle Corbet: Or the Emigrants

"In Bogle Corbet, Galt brought his pioneering brand of social fiction to a broader canvas, encompassing a transatlantic world unsettled by colonialism, revolution, slavery and industrialization. The first unabridged reissue of the novel since 1831, this edition includes a superb introduction and supplemental material that provide multiple points of context, illuminating Galt's engrossing portrait of the British Atlantic." -Kenneth McNeil, Eastern Connecticut State University