Agnes Maule Machar (1837-1927) was born in Kingston, Ontario, her lifelong home from which she developed a national reputation as a progressive social reformer. A staunch Canadidan nationalist and practitioner of the social gospel, she authored dozens of articles as well as stories, novels and poems dedicated to humanitarian causes that included higher education for women, benevolence towards the poor, kindness to animals, temperance, labour reform, and the defence of Christianity. Now almost forgotten, she was highly respected around the turn of the century as one of Canada's foremost female public figures. "Katie Johnstone's Cross: A Canadian Tale" (1870) was a religious romance, typical of much of her fiction. Her most important novel, "Roland Graeme, Knight: A Novel of Our Time" (1892), took on the social and economic problems of industrialization.

"Roland Graeme: Knight", fittingly subtitled "A Novel of our Time", dauntlessly tackles the most pressing social and economic issues of the 1890s. The first Canadian novel to address directly the need for labour reform, it advocates the program and cause of the Knights of Labour, seeking to resolve social and economic inequities through education, benevolence, and good will. Issues entwined in its primary plot include temperance and alcoholism, Christian activism (the social gospel), and the obligation of middle-class women to participate actively in social reform.