GALT, JOHN (1779-1839), Scottish novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, and educated in his native town and at Greenock. In 1804 he settled in London. Charged with a commission from a merchant firm to find methods of evading the Berlin and Milan decrees, he was travelling in the Mediterranean when he met Byron and Hobhouse at Gibraltar. He travelled with Byron to Malta, and met him again at Athens. In 1814 he visited France and Holland on similar business for a Glasgow firm. In 1826 he went to America as secretary of the Canada Land company. Galt opened up a road between Lakes Huron and Erie through the forest country, and founded Guelph in Upper Canada. The town of Galt was named after him. But, though his work was success ful, he returned home practically a ruined man. All his life he had been a voluminous writer, and he now devoted himself entirely to literature. The last years of his life were spent at Greenock, where he died on April II, 1839.
His masterpieces are The Ayrshire Legatees (1820), The Annals of the Parish 0821), Sir Andrew Wylie (1822), The Provost (1822), The Entail (1823) and Lawrie Todd (1830). The Ayr shire Legatees gives, in the form of letters, the adventures of the Rev. Dr. Pringle and his family in London. The letters are made the excuse for endless tea-parties and meetings of kirk-session in the rural parish of Garnock. The Annals of the Parish are told by the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, Galt's finest character. This work (which existed in ms. before Waverley was published) is a humorous and truthful picture of the old-fashioned Scottish pastor and the life of a country parish. In Lawrie Todd the life of a Canadian settler is depicted with considerable imaginative power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The best of Galt's novels were reprinted in BlackBibliography.-The best of Galt's novels were reprinted in Black- wood's Standard Novels (1841) , to vol. i. of which his friend, Dr. Moir, prefixed a memoir. Several of the novels have appeared in later editions. See also G. B. S. Douglas, The Blackwood Group (1897) ; R. K. Gordon, John Galt (Toronto, 1920; bibl.) ; W. Roughead, Introduction to A Rich Man and other Stories, by John Galt (1925).