Major (John) Richardson

Born in Upper Canada in 1796, John Richardson served with the British during the War of 1812 and was captured at the Battle of Moraviantown. Those experiences stayed with him and later shaped both his fiction and his nonfiction writing about war, memory, and life on the borderlands.

He spent many years in Europe, where he built a career as a writer and journalist. Richardson is best remembered for Wacousta (1832), a dramatic historical novel set against the conflict around Pontiac’s uprising, and for The Canadian Brothers, which returned to themes drawn from the War of 1812.

Today he is often described as the first Canadian-born novelist to achieve international recognition. His work blends romance, adventure, and military history, and it remains important to readers interested in early Canadian literature and the stories that shaped it.