Roughing it in the Bush, or, Life in Canada by Susanna Moodie

Roughing it in the Bush, or, Life in Canada by Susanna Moodie

Betty had plenty of potatoes, without the trouble of planting, or the expense of buying; she never kept a cow, yet she sold butter and milk; but she had a fashion, and it proved a convenient one to her, of making pets of the cattle of her neighbours. we all looked upon Betty as a sort of freebooter, living upon the property of others. -from Chapter V: Our First Settlement, and the Borrowing System A classic of Canadian frontier literature, this delightful volume was devoured by readers on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1852, who turned to it for an unvarnished portrait of homesteading in the woods of Upper Canada. Though Moodie depicts a life that is harsh and dangerous in an unforgiving environment far from civilization, her sense of humor and embracing of adventure are extraordinary, and create an invaluable first-person document of a formative time in North American history. Canadian writer SUSANA MODIE (1803-1885) was born in England and emigrated to Canada with her husband, a military officer, in 1832. The sister of author Catharine Parr Traill, Moodie also wrote Life in the Clearings (1853) and Matrimonial Speculations (1854).

Susanna Moodie was born Susanna Strickland in the Suffolk town of Bungay in the year 1803. She grew up in a middle-class environment where reading and writing were encouraged. She is the sixth and final daughter of a retired port manager. Her sisters Agnes and Elizabeth would go on to publish Lives of the Queens of England and other aristocratic histories, while her sister Catharine Parr (later Traill) would travel to Canada and write several natural history works, and her brother Samuel, another emigrant to Canada, would write on the life of the settler. Susanna's juvenilia includes poetry and a number of young adult literature stories. Susanna Strickland married John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie, a military officer who had returned to England from South Africa to look for a wife and pursue publishing enterprises.

They moved to Upper Canada (Ontario) a year later. Susanna Moodie's Flora Lyndsay (1854) is a fictitious depiction of the family's journey to Canada, culminating in the journey up the Saint Lawrence River. The Moodies lived on cleared property near Port Hope for their first seventeen months in Canada. They moved to a bush property in Douro Township, north of Peterborough, near Samuel Strickland and Catharine Parr Traill's residences, in 1834.

For five years, the Moodies lived on the farm, and their memoir, Roughing It in the Bush (1852), chronicles their experiences in these two backwoods locales. Dunbar Moodie served in the Upper Canada militia from 1837 to 1839 before being named Sheriff of Victoria District (later Hastings County) in 1839. Around 1840, he and his family relocated to Belleville, where they remained until his death in 1869. Susanna Moodie spent her time after her husband's death with her various grown children and her sister Catharine.

Susanna Moodie died in 1885 in Toronto, Ontario.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780771099755
ISBN 10	0771099754
Title	Roughing it in the Bush, or, Life in Canada
Author	Susanna Moodie
Series	New Canadian Library S
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Year published	1996-09-01
Number of pages	544
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable