Douglas Smith Huyghue (1816-1891) was a British North American and Colony of Victoria poet, fiction writer, essayist, and artist.

Biography

Born April 23, 1816, in

Charlottetown Charlottetown is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, and the county seat of Queens County. Named after Queen Charlotte, Charlottetown was an unincorporated town until it was incorporated as a city in ...

, Prince Edward Island, to an impoverished British lieutenant, it is believed Douglas Smith Huyghue was educated at the Saint John Grammar School. His first published poetry was in the ''Halifax Morning Post and Parliamentary Reporter'', where his work appeared under the pseudonym 'Eugene'. In the early 1840s, he began regularly contributing poetry, short fiction, and essays to the literary magazine ''Amaranth'', published in Saint John, New Brunswick. His novel, ''Argimou: A Legend of the Micmac'', was serialized in ''Amaranth'' in 1842 and was first published in book form in 1847. At that time Huyghue also assisted province’s commissioner of Indian affairs in arranging an exhibition of Indian artefacts. In the late 1840s he moved to England, where he published a three-volume novel, ''Nomades of the West; or, Ellen Clayton'' (1850), and then immigrated to Australia on the Lady Peel in 1852.''Dictionary of Literary Biography'', Volume 99: Canadian Writers Before 1890. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by W. H. New, University of British Columbia. The Gale Group, 1990. pp. 175-177 In 1853 he became a clerk in the Office of Mines in the

Ballarat Ballarat ( ) is a city in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Census, Ballarat had a population of 116,201, making it the third largest city in Victoria. Estimated resid ...

goldfields, where he witnessed the Eureka Stockade revolt of 1854. His watercolor, "The Eureka Stockade," is exhibited at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. He continued working as a civil servant in

and Graytown, his last post being at the Department of Mines in Melbourne. He died July 24, 1891.

Works

*''Nomades of the West; or, Ellen Clayton'', 3 volumes. London: Bentley, 1850. *''Argimou: A Legend of the Micmac,'' with an afterword by Gwendolyn Davies. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017. Early Canadian Literature series.

Publications in Periodicals

'Recollections of Canada. The Scenery of the Ottawa,' ''Bentley's Miscellany'' (1849): 489–497. 'A Winter's Journey,' ''Bentley's Miscellany'' (1849): 630–638. 'My First Winter in the Woods of Canada,' ''Bentley's Miscellany'' (1850): 152–160. 'Forest Incidents—Recollections of Canada,' ''Bentley's Miscellany'' (1850): 472–477.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huyghue, Douglas Smith Pre-Confederation Prince Edward Island people 1816 births 1891 deaths 19th-century Australian artists Artists from Victoria (state) People from the Colony of Victoria 19th-century Australian writers Writers from Charlottetown