Sara Jeannette Duncan was a Canadian author and journalist best known for The Imperialist, considered to be one of the first modern Canadian novels. Educated as a teacher, Duncan shifted to journalism, acting as a travelling writer for Canadian newspapers in addition to writing columns for The Globe and later for the Washington Post. Following her marriage to an Anglo-Indian civil servant, Duncan turned to fiction, and went on to publish more than twenty novels. Duncan died in 1922, shortly after settling in Surrey, England, with her husband.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's classic portrait of a turn-of-the-century Ontario town, The Imperialist captures the spirit of an emergent nation through the example of two young dreamers. Impassioned by "the Imperialist idea," Lorne Murchison rests his bid for office on his vision of a rejuvenated British Empire. His sister Advena betrays a kindred attraction to the high-flown ideals in her love for an unworldly, and unavailable, young minister. Nimbly alternating between politics and romance, Duncan constructs a superbly ironic object-lesson in the Canadian virtue of compromise.Sympathetic, humorous, and wonderfully detailed, The Imperialist is an astute analysis of the paradoxes of Canadian nationhood, as relevant today as when the novel was first published in 1904.Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you...