Interpretations of Canada's emerging identity have been largely based on a relatively small corpus of literary writing and landscape paintings, overlooking the influence of the British and American travel writers who published hundreds of books and articles that did much to fix the image of Canada in the popular imagination.

In his Fashioning the Canadian Landscape, J.I. Little examines how Canada, much like the United States, came to be identified with its natural landscape. Little argues that in contrast to the American identification with the wilderness sublime, however,...