James De Mille

Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, on August 23, 1833, James De Mille spent much of his career in Nova Scotia as a teacher and professor. Sources describe him as a longtime member of Dalhousie’s faculty, where he taught subjects including history, rhetoric, and literature, while building a second life as a remarkably productive writer.

De Mille published more than 30 novels and became known for wit, humour, and a wide range of interests. His books drew on historical settings as well as adventure and boys’ fiction, and his European travels helped inspire some of his Italian scenes. His most famous work now is A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, a posthumously published novel often remembered for its unusual imagination and early speculative-fiction feel.

He died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on January 28, 1880. Though not as widely read as some later Canadian writers, he remains an important early figure in Canadian literature: a scholar, entertainer, and versatile storyteller whose work shows how ambitious and playful nineteenth-century fiction could be.