author

Joseph Noad

1823–1898

A 19th-century Newfoundland writer and public official, he is remembered for a lecture that explored the history and fate of the Beothuk people. His surviving work offers a revealing glimpse of how colonial-era readers were introduced to Indigenous history.

1 Audiobook

Lecture on the Aborigines of Newfoundland

Lecture on the Aborigines of Newfoundland

by Joseph Noad

About the author

Joseph Noad is known today for Lecture on the Aborigines of Newfoundland, a talk delivered at the Mechanics' Institute in St. John’s in January 1859 and later preserved in print. In that work, he examined ideas about the origins of the Indigenous peoples of Newfoundland and wrote specifically about the Beothuk.

The text itself identifies him as the Hon. Joseph Noad and Surveyor-General, showing that his writing grew out of public life as well as literary interest. Modern library and ebook records consistently list him as Joseph Noad (1823–1898), and this lecture is the main work that remains widely available to readers.

Because reliable biographical information is scarce in the sources located here, it is safest to remember him chiefly as a Newfoundland-era lecturer and author whose surviving book reflects the attitudes, curiosity, and limitations of mid-19th-century historical writing.