Moodie - Roughing it in the bush, or, Life in Canada

PENGUIN CLASSICS

SUSANNA MOODIE was born in Suffolk, England, in 1803. In 1831, she married John Moodie, a retired officer who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1832, the Moodies and their infant daughter emigrated to Canada. Susannas older sister Catharine Parr Traill and her husband, Thomas Traill, arrived in Canada the same year. Moodie had been published widely before she left Britain, and she continued writing poetry and magazine articles after her arrival in the colony. Her letters and journals contain valuable information about colonial life in these early years of Canada. She is the author of a number of books, including Life in the Clearings; Mark Hurdlestone, the Gold Worshipper; and Matrimonial Speculations, but is best known for Roughing It in the Bush; or, Life in Canada. Moodie died in 1885 in Toronto, Ontario, at the home of her daughter.

SUSANNA
MOODIE

Roughing It in the Bush; or, Life in Canada

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Penguin Classics edition copyright Penguin Group (Canada), 2006.
This edition is an unabridged reprint of the second edition with additions of
Roughing It in the Bush, published in 1852 by Richard Bentley in London, England.

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to
Agnes Strickland ,
Author of the Lives of the Queens of England,
this simple tribute of affection
is dedicated,
by her sister.
Susanna Moodie.

Contents

Chronology

1803 Susanna is born on December 6 in Suffolk, England, the youngest of six daughters of Thomas Strickland, a merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth. Two sons follow the girls. The family lives at Stowe House, near Bungay.

1808 The Stricklands move to Reydon Hall, an elegant country mansion near the Suffolk coast.

1818 Thomas Strickland dies, leaving his family in genteel poverty.

1822 Susannas first known published work, a childrens story called Spartacus, is published.

1825 Susannas brother Samuel emigrates to Upper Canada to learn farming in the colony.

182232 Susannas poems, stories, and sketches appear in several London magazines, including La Belle Assemble, the Athenaeum, and Ackermanns Juvenile Forget-Me-Not.

1830 Susanna spends several weeks in London as a guest of Thomas Pringle, a Scottish poet and magazine editor, and his wife. Pringle is secretary of the Anti-Slavery League.

1830 Susanna becomes engaged to John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie, a thirty-six-year-old retired British military officer born in the Orkney Islands. He had spent several years in South Africa.

1831 Two anti-slavery pamphlets, containing first-hand accounts of the sufferings of former slaves Mary Prince and Ashton Warner transcribed by Susanna Strickland, are published in London.

1831 Susanna marries John Moodie on April 4 at St. Pancras (Anglican) Church, London. They move to a cottage in Southwold, Suffolk , nearer Susannas family.

1831 Publication of Enthusiasm, and Other Poems, prompted by Moodies intense but short-lived conversion to Congregationalism, a Nonconformist sect.

1832 Catherine Mary Josephine (Katie) is born on February 14.

1832 Catharine Parr Strickland, Susannas sister, marries John Moodies fellow officer Thomas Traill on May 13 in Suffolk.

1832 On July 1 Susanna and John Moodie sail from Leith, Scotland, for Quebec on the brig Anne. Thomas and Catharine Parr Traill leave Greenock, Scotland, two weeks later, and arrive in Montreal two weeks before the Moodies land at Quebec City. The Traills travel straight to Lakefield to be near Sam Strickland and his wife, Mary.

1832 On September 9, upon arrival in Cobourg, Upper Canada, the Moodies buy a cleared farm near Port Hope.

1833 In February Moodies first Canadian poems appear in the New York Albion.

1833 Birth of Moodies second daughter, Agnes Dunbar, on June 9.

1834 In February Moodie receives a modest legacy from an English relative. The Moodies move to a bush farm on Lake Katchewanooka, near Douro Township north of Peterborough, to be near Sam Strickland and Catharine Parr Traill.