The Clockmaker: The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville

By Thomas Chandler Haliburton and SAM SLICK (THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON)

Book Overview

Sam Slick of Slickville, Connecticut, is a Yankee clock-peddler who accompanies a visiting English gentleman on an unforgettable tour of early nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. His shrewd observations and witty commentaries make up the thirty-three sketches of The Clockmaker . First serialized in 1835 and 1836 and then published together in late 1836 in response to public demand, the sketches of The Clockmaker established Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton as a satirical humorist of international stature. The New Canadian Library edition is an unabridged reprint of the complete original text.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771096259
• ISBN13: 9780771096259
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: New Canadian Library
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Nova Scotia meets Sam Slick: never the same again

Series of short stories written originally for The Nova Scotian in the early 1830s. The narrator while riding through Nova Scotia meets an itinerant clock seller - Samual Slick of Slickville, Connecticut. The stories concern the views and opinions of Slick about - well, almost anything. And, for the most part, they are funny. A great deal of the book is a satire or parody of the moralizing story popular at the time: although occasionally, the stories themselves do fall into the moralizing trap themselves. If nothing else, great history as told by a contemporary neighbour of a young United States. The period is equidistant between the revolutionary war and the civil war. In one story, Sam Slick expounds on the great freedoms of the American people: all men created equal. The narrator points out that it is the British Empire (and hence Nova Scotia) where slavery is abolished. Maybe, says the narrator, the American constitution meant all white people are created equal. The humour is often of this type where paradoxes and false syllogisms are revealed.