Roughing It in the Bush: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by Susanna Moodie, Michael Peterman

Overview

In 1832, Susanna Moodie immigrated to Canada from Britain with her husband and daughter in search of comfort and independence in the unsettled Canadian backwoods.

She went on to chronicle her experiences in this personal, accurate, and often humorous account.  This Norton Critical Edition of Roughing It in the Bush provides everything that a student needs to analyze and enjoy Moodie’s tale.

A thorough “Backgrounds” section includes images, a map, contemporary reviews of Roughing It, and letters written by Moodie to her husband during the winter of 1839, at which time he was serving a military appointment in the Victoria District and she and her children were facing life-threatening illnesses.

“Criticism” contains ten essays by leading Canadian scholars and authors, among them Margaret Atwood, Carl Ballstadt, D. M. R. Bentley, Susan Glickman, and Michael Peterman.

A Chronology of Susanna Moodie’s life and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393926675
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/24/2007
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael Peterman is Professor of English at Trent University. He is the author of Roberson Davies, Susanna Moodie: A Life, and “This Great Epoch of Our Lives”: Susanna Moodie’s “Roughing It in the Bush”. He is the editor of The Backwoods of Canada by Catharine Parr Traill, and is co-editor of Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime with Carl Ballstadt and Elizabeth Hopkins and Letters of Love and Duty: The Correspondence of John and Susanna Moodie with Carl Ballstadt and Elizabeth Hopkins. He is a past editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction     vii
The Text of Roughing It in the Bush     1
Choice of Text and Editing Strategy     333
Backgrounds
Illustrations     337
Map     342
Advertisement for the First Edition     343
Preface to Roughing It in the Bush     344
Introduction to the 1871 Edition     344
Canadian Sketches     351
Old Woodruff and His Three Wives     372
Jeanie Burns     381
Lost Children     389
Susanna Moodie's Letters to Her Husband, 1839     395
A Slight Sketch of the Early Life of Mrs. Moodie     399
Forest Life in Canada West     401
The Backwoods of Canada     404
Misrepresentation     405
Review from The Provincial: or, Halifax Monthly Magazine     407
Review from The Canadian Monthly and National Review     410
Criticism
Afterword to The Journals of Susanna Moodie     417
Susanna Moodie and the English Sketch     419
"Secrets of the Prison-House": Mrs. Moodie and the Canadian Imagination     425
Rewriting Roughing It     433
Breaking the "Cake of Custom": The Atlantic Crossing as a Rubicon for Female Emigrants to Canada?     442
"The tongue of woman": The Language of the Self in Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush     473
The Waxing and Waning of Susanna Moodie's "Enthusiasm"     490
Roughing It in Michigan and Upper Canada: Caroline Kirkland and Susanna Moodie     512
Nobler Savages: Representations of Native Women in the Writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill     522
Reconstructing the Palladium of British America: How the Rebellion of 1837 and Charles Fothergill Helped to Establish Susanna Moodie as a Writer in Canada     538
The Broken Mirror of Domestic Ideology: Femininity as Textual Practice in Susanna Moodie's Autobiographical Works     559
Two Exemplary Early Texts: Moodie's Roughing It and Jameson's Studies and Rambles     571
Susanna Strickland Moodie: A Chronology     583
Selected Bibliography     585