Galt’s pragmatic turn of mind meant that he was disinclined to write novels merely as exercises in fancy. His intention was to instruct as well as to entertain and he gave the title of ‘theoretical history’ to the body of his works. Novels such as Annals of the Parish (1821), The Entail (1822), The Provost (1822) or The Member (1832) are studies of religion, politics and law in the local boroughs of Scotland during the transitional late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Galt’s novels then are concerned with the effects of change upon communities and upon the social institutions that shape those communities. The novels are far from dry, prosaic studies, however. Galt’s gift for storytelling is characterised by wit and humour – often at the expense of the unsuspecting self-revelations of his first person narrators.

In Annals of the Parish, Galt’s first and perhaps best known ‘theoretical history,’ Galt takes as his narrator the simple, if somewhat worldly and vain minister Micah Balwhidder. The novel is deceptively simple, with very little in the way of plot development. Each chapter describes the events of a single year in Balwhidder’s ministry, spanning the years 1760 to 1810. Much of the pleasure of the book derives from Galt’s ironic treatment of the narrator’s own deluded self-importance. Balwhidder’s theology is strictly orthodox and his interpretation of events, in which he places himself as a latter-day apostle, is often restricted to a parochial and self-interested view. For his observations of international affairs he reads the Scots Magazine, he unwittingly reveals his desire to take a wife for selfish, domestic ends and he is more than casually interested in his worldly status. One of the most celebrated of Galt’s techniques is his faithful rendering of Ayrshire Scots as a vehicle for sophisticated storytelling and Balwhidder’s narrative voice is recorded with attention to its peculiar ministerial elements of biblical allusion and classical learning.

The novel then is a vehicle both for irony, at the expense of an unwitting central character, and social critique via its observations of parish life during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The novel records the effects of agricultural improvement, industrialisation, new roads and communications as well as the impact of the American Wars of Independence and the French Revolution, albeit events and changes that are seen to merely touch upon the edges of a quiet rural parish. The skill of the novel is in conveying the rapid change of Scottish society in a manner that accurately reflects the way in which history itself moves by increments and that the peoples at the eye of the storm rarely perceive its momentum. It was this combination of historical accuracy alongside sociological perception that led the contemporary critic, John Wilson, to comment of Annals of the Parish, that it was “not a book but a fact” – a practicable reading that would, no doubt, have pleased Galt immensely.

Galt’s writing has undergone a patchy critical reception. Some critics charged him with parochialism and some considered his rendering of ‘coarse Scots’ too ‘vulgar’ for polite tastes. Other regarded Galt simply as a comic writer and failed to perceive his wider historical and sociological intentions.

A novel such as Ringan Gilhaize (1823), described in 1897 by Sir George Douglas as “a neglected masterpiece,” gives the lie to such assessments. The nineteenth-century reviewer, Francis Jeffrey, criticised the novel for its gloomy atmosphere. But in this book Galt made a radical departure from the tone of his past works in an historical novel that is intended to shock rather than entertain. Ringan Gilhaize is comparable with James Hogg’s earlier Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner (1824), which describes the effects of religious fanaticism. The psychological precision of Galt’s depiction of the eventual demise of his central protagonist, Ringan, was part of Galt’s larger desire to investigate the private motives animating the Covenanting movement and the spirit that ignited the religious controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The novel, which is ultimately a plea for moderation and good sense, eschews partisanship, and depicts incidents of generosity and compassion on both sides.

In this novel, arguably more than any other, Galt turned his attention to the psychology of the Scottish race and attempted to analyse the tragedy of its recent history. It deals with the themes of community, loyalty, religious and legal justice and with violence as a begetter of further violence. The novel illustrates Galt’s engagement with the philosophies of the Scottish enlightenment and particularly Francis Hutcheson’s theories of man’s innate moral sense as developed in the movement known as the Scottish Commonsense School. It is, in the final analysis, testimony to Galt’s greatest skills as a writer; as an acute observer of human psychology, an acute as well as philosophical historian, and a faithful recorder of the Scottish voice and experience.