The Foreigner (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in rural Saskatchewan. It addresses the themes of male maturation, cultural assimilation, and a form of “muscular Christianity” recurring in Connor’s popular Western tales. Daniel Coleman’s afterword considers the text’s departure from Connor’s established fiction formulas and provides a unique framework for understanding its depiction of difference.
Charles W. Gordon (1860–1937) was educated at the University of Toronto and ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1890. Under the pseudonym Ralph Connor, he published over thirty novels that made him an internationally best-selling author, including The Man from Glengarry (1901) and Glengarry School Days (1902).
|Daniel Coleman teaches in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. His research covers Canadian Literature, cultural production of categories of privilege, literatures of immigration and diaspora, and the politics of reading. His publications include White Civility (2006) and In Bed with the Word (2009) as well as co-edited scholarly volumes.