In 1906, two years after the appearance of her best-known novel, The Imperialist, Duncan published its darker twin, an Anglo-Indian novel which returns to political themes but with a deeper and more clinical irony than in her previous work. Set in Authority is about illusions: the imperial illusions of those who rule and are ruled; the illusions of families about their members; the illusions of men and women about each other. The setting moves between the political drawing rooms of London and the English station at Pilaghur in the province of Ghoom, where the murder of a native by an English soldier changes the lives of a cast of ruthlessly observed characters.

Duncan, who grew up in Ontario, led a remarkably varied life, working as a political correspondent (writing for the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and the Montreal Star) and living in India for over twenty years. She is increasingly being regarded as deserving of a place among the first rank of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novelists; the re-publication of Set in Authority will do nothing to dispel that view.

Sara Jeannette Duncan was a Canadian author and journalist best known for The Imperialist, considered to be one of the first modern Canadian novels. Educated as a teacher, Duncan shifted to journalism, acting as a travelling writer for Canadian newspapers in addition to writing columns for The Globe and later for the Washington Post. Following her marriage to an Anglo-Indian civil servant, Duncan turned to fiction, and went on to publish more than twenty novels. Duncan died in 1922, shortly after settling in Surrey, England, with her husband.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's profile page

Germaine Warkentin is a professor emerita of the Department of English at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

Germaine Warkentin's profile page

“This valuable edition locates Duncan’s novel about the Anglo-Indian community at the height of the British Empire in its socio-political, historical context—one that foregrounds Duncan’s frank and insightful evocation of the imperialist project in this and other novels.” — Sukeshi Kamra, Chair, English Dept., Okanagan University College