Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was a Nova Scotian jurist, politician, and author who achieved international literary fame. Serving as a judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Haliburton invented the character of Sam Slick, a shrewd, fast-talking Yankee clockmaker whose observations on colonial Nova Scotia skewered both American materialism and British colonial inertia.

Published as The Clockmaker; or, the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville (1836), the book was an international bestseller in Britain and America, leading Mark Twain and Artemus Ward to hail Haliburton as the father of North American literary humor.