All the bestsellers were found at McMaster’s Book Store

Phil Egan

Every age has its great writers, and the love of books was universal in Sarnia 150 years ago.

Taking a stroll through the town’s commercial core in the time of Confederation, you’d pass Daniel Mackenzie’s Dry Goods store, Moses Masuret’s grocery, and the Belchamber Hotel. Close to Pottinger’s Grocery and Chalmer’s Hardware Store near Lochiel Street stood David McMaster’s Book Store.

If you had strolled into the store in Confederation Days and asked the proprietor to recommend a good book, he might have suggested some of the bestsellers of the time.

Written in 1859 and an Anglophile’s delight, Beetons Book of Household Management might have seemed a little out of touch with life in a small Ontario town, but the three-inch thick compendium of recipes and household tips had sold two million copies by 1868.

“I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways,” Mrs. Beeton warned. Also known as Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book, it made Isabella Beeton the Delia Smith or Nigella Lawson of the 1860s.

Susanna Moodie’s, Roughing it in the Bush, by contrast, was more down-to-earth. It was written in 1852 to describe the experiences of an immigrant living in Canada West. Moodie settled in the 1830s in the wild bush country of today’s Peterborough. The book was part of a trilogy looking satirically of the life of early Canadian settlers.

The American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter, was published in 1850 and became one of the first mass-produced books in America. It studied scandal in the 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony, but its themes of sin and forgiveness found a universal audience.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick would also have been available at McMaster’s Book Shop. Also known as simply, The Whale, the 1851 masterpiece has been called “the greatest novel in American literature.” The story of Captain Ahab and the white whale had thrilled both readers and movie fans for over 150 years.

Some 150 years after its initial publication, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman would become a gift given to Monica Lewinsky by President Bill Clinton. Whitman worked on revisions to the 1850 book all his life as it grew from 12 poems to over 400. Whitman would visit Sarnia in 1880, but there is no record of him taking the time to drop into McMaster’s for a book signing.

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, and would also become popular for over a century. Her Little Men, or Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys, would follow in 1871.

Whatever book met your needs, you’d find it at McMaster’s.