Many years ago I heard a talk on BBC radio on Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Trail. On a subsequent visit to London I bought this book which then languished on my bookshelves until a few weeks ago. More or less stuck in the house with all the snow and ice outside, I decided to clean my bookcase, and so I came across this biography. Time for a read!
Stuck in rural rural isolation and genteel poverty sisters Susanna and Catherine and their husbands emigrated to Canada in the 1830's. They were leaving 'comfortable, if threadbare, lives and promising literary careers' and ended up in 'raw Upper Canada, not pastoral England'. Suddenly they had to face the rigours of pioneer life.
As a journalist wrote at the time: 'These delicately nurtured ladies, who had been familiar with the best of London literary society had arrived in the waste howling wilderness and slaved as no servant girl slaves in England.' This much to the mortification of their English sisters who did not relish any references to the circumstances of their Canadian relations. Imagine: living in only a wooden house ...'
Susanna and Catherine (like three of their sisters) were published authors in England; writing came naturally to them and was also a way of making money. They wrote books on life 'in the Bush' and on Canadian plants. They are now regarded as icons of the Canadian literary landscape.
I am a quick reader but this book made me slow down because there is so much to take in. There is the story of the two sisters and their families, but Charlotte Gray provides a lot of context too, which makes for a very interesting read. Recommended!
