Date Published:
February 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

François-Xavier Garneau

Garneau, François-Xavier (1809-1866), historian, was born at Quebec, Lower Canada, on June 15, 1809. He was educated at the Quebec Seminary, and became a notary public. In 1831 he accompanied D. B. Viger to England and France as his secretary, and met many literary notabilities. In 1840 he was stimulated to write a history of Canada by Lord Durham's remark that the French Canadians were a people "without a history and without a literature". The first volume of his Histoire du Canada appeared in Quebec in 1845; the second in 1846; the third in 1848; and the fourth at Montreal in 1852. A second edition was published at Quebec in 1852, and a third in 1859. A fourth edition was published at Montreal in 1882, under the direction of Alfred Garneau, and a fifth at Paris in 1913-20 under the editorship of Hector Garneau. An English translation, by A. Bell, was published in Montreal in 1860. Garneau died at Quebec, on February 3, 1866. He married Esther Bilodeau, and by her he had several children. See G. Lanctot, François-Xavier Garneau (Toronto, 1927); H. R. Casgrain, F.-X. Garneau (Quebec, 1866) ; P. J. O. Chauveau. François-Xavier Garneau, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Montreal, 1884); L. M. Darveau, Nos hommes de lettres (Montreal, 1873); and H. d'Arles, Nos historiens (Montreal, 1921).

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. III, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 396p., p. 9.