Roughing it in the Bush or Life in Canada 9780773573468

Table of contents :
Contents
Frontispiece: Portrait of Susanna Moodie
Abbreviations
Foreword
Editor's Preface
Editor's Introduction
Illustrations: Chart of Country North of Cobourg c. 1833
Title-page of the 1852 Bentley Edition (First Impression)
Dedication
Illustration: Partial Map of Hamilton Township
Roughing It in the Bush: Part 1
Illustration: Partial Map of Douro and Dummer Townships
Roughing It in the Bush: Part 2
Explanatory Notes
Bibliographical Description of Authoritative Editions
Published Versions of the Text
Variants in Copy-text
Emendations in Copy-text
Line-end Hyphenated Compounds in Copy-text
Line-end Hyphenated Compounds in CEECT Edition
Historical Collation
Appendices: Advertisement For The First Edition
Introduction To The 1871 Edition

Citation preview

ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH

The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT) is engaged in the preparation of scholarly editions of selected works of early English-Canadian prose. Roughing It in the Bush is the fifth text in the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts Series. GENERAL EDITOR Mary Jane Edwards

EDITORIAL BOARD Mary Jane Edwards (Chair) Michael Gnarowski Robert G. Laird Robert L. McDougall J. Jeremy Palin John A. Stewart D. Roland Thomas S. F. Wise ADVISORS TO THE PROJECT Fred Cogswell (University of New Brunswick); E. A. Collard (Ottawa); Gordon R. Elliott (Simon Fraser University); Francess G. Halpenny (University of Toronto); Carl F. Klinck (University of Western Ontario); Douglas G. Lochhead (Mount Allison University); R. D. Mathews (Carleton University); W. F. E. Morley (Queen's University); Gordon R. Moyles (University of Alberta); W. H. New (University of British Columbia); J. M. Robson (Victoria College, Toronto); Gordon H. Roper (Trent University); Malcolm Ross (Dalhousie University); Clara Thomas (York University).

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Roughing It

in the Bush or Life in Canada

Susanna Moodie Edited by CariBallstadt

/ sketch from Nature, and the picture's true; Whate 'er the subject, whether grave or gay, Painful experience in a distant land Made it mine own.

Carleton University Press

© Carleton University Press Inc. (1988), 1995 ISBN 0-88629-043-0 casebound 0-88629-045-7 paperback

Reprinted in paperback 1999 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Moodie, Susanna, 1803-1885 Roughing it in the bush, or, Life in Canada (Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts Series ; 5) ISBN 0-88629-043-0 (casebound) ISBN 0-88629-045-7 (paperback) 1. Frontier and pioneer life—Ontario. 2. Ontario— Description and travel—1764-1850. I. Ballstadt, Carl, 1931. II. title. III. Title: Life in Canada. IV. Series. FC3067.2.M66 1988 F1057.M66 1988

917.13'042

C88-090328-7

Distributed by: McGILL-QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY PRESS 3430 Mc Tavish Street, Montreal, P.Q. H3A 1X9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Carleton University Press and the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts gratefully acknowledge the support of Carleton University, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Henry White Kinnear Foundation in the preparation and publication of this edition of Roughing It in the Bush. The cover of the paperback edition incorporates a water-colour reproduction, The Bush Farm (c. 1838) by Philip John Bainbrigge, used with the kind permission of the National Archives of Canada.

Contents Frontispiece: Portrait of Susanna Moodie

iv

Abbreviations

ix

Foreword

xi

Editor's Preface

xiii

Editor's Introduction

xvii

Illustrations: Chart of Country North of Cobourg c. 1833

Title-page of the 1852 Bentley Edition (First Impression) Dedication

Ixi

lxiii lxv

Illustration: Partial Map of Hamilton Township

2

Roughing It in the Bush: Part 1

3

Illustration:

Partial Map of Douro and Dummer Townships

276

Roughing It in the Bush: Part 2

277

Explanatory Notes

553

Bibliographical Description of Authoritative Editions

609

Published Versions of the Text

623

Variants in Copy-text

637

Emendations in Copy-text

645

Line-end Hyphenated Compounds in Copy-text

649

Line-end Hyphenated Compounds in CEECT Edition

653

Historical Collation

657

Appendices: Advertisement For The First Edition

669

Introduction To The 1871 Edition

671

Note to Third Printing This printing reproduces on 50 lb. offset the first printing of the CEECT edition with the exception that on the "Contents" page "Photograph of Susanna Moodie" now reads "Portrait of Susanna Moodie."

Abbreviations

AL ALS BA BL CEECT DCB DLC DNB IU Letters

Autograph letter Autograph letter signed Archives of Richard Bentley & Son, 1829-1898 British Library, London Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts Dictionary of Canadian Biography Library of Congress, Washington Dictionary of National Biography University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois Susanna Moodie. Letters of a Lifetime. Ed. Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael Peterman. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985 NA National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario NRU University of Rochester Library, Rochester, New York OHM McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario OKQ Queen's University Library, Kingston, Ontario OLU University of Western Ontario Library, London, Ontario OOCC Carleton University Library, Ottawa, Ontario OOL Department of Labour Library, Ottawa, Ontario OONL National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario OPET Trent University Library, Peterborough, Ontario OPETP Peterborough Public Library, Peterborough, Ontario OTAR Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario OTCHAR Anglican Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Ontario OTMCL Metropolitan Toronto Library, Toronto, Ontario OTU University of Toronto Library, Toronto, Ontario PHEC The Patrick Hamilton Ewing Collection Of Moodie-Strickland-Vickers-Ewing Family Papers QMM McLennan Library, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec ix

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Foreword

The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT) was established to prepare for publication scholarly editions of major works of early English-Canadian prose that are now either out of print or available only in corrupt reprints. Begun by Carleton University in 1979, CEECT has been funded jointly by Carleton and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada since 1981. During this time six editions have been in preparation; four of these, Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague, Catharine Parr Traill's Canadian Crusoes, James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, and John Richardson's Wacousta have already been published. A classic depiction of pioneer life in Canada and a major piece of autobiography, Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush, originally published in 1852, is the fifth volume in the CEECT series. In the preparation of these editions, advice and guidance have been sought from a broad range of international scholarship, and contemporary principles and procedures for the scholarly editing of literary texts have been followed. These principles and procedures have been adapted to suit the special circumstances of Canadian literary scholarship and the particular needs of each of the works in the CEECT series. The text of each scholarly edition in this series has been critically established after the history of the composition and first publication has been researched and its editions analysed and compared. The critical text is clear, with only authorial notes, if any, appearing in the body of the book. Each of these editions also has an editor's introduction with a separate section on the text, and, as concluding apparatus, explanatory notes, a bibliographical description of the copy-text and, when relevant, of other authoritative editions, a list of other versions of the text, a record of emendations made to the copy-text, a list of line-end xi

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FOREWORD

hyphenated compounds in the copy-text as they are resolved in the CEECT edition, and a list of line-end hyphenated compounds in the CEECT edition as they should be resolved in quotations from this text. An historical collation is included when more than one edition has authority, and, as necessary, appendices containing material directly relevant to the text. Because of the circumstances surrounding the printing of the first impression of the first edition of Roughing It in the Bush, a list of variants within this impression forms part of the concluding apparatus in this text. In the preparation of all these CEECT editions for publication, identical procedures, in so far as the particular history of each work allowed, have been followed. An attempt has been made to Find and analyse every pre-publication version of the work known to exist. In the absence of a manuscript or proof, at least five copies of each edition that was a candidate for copy-text have been examined, and at least three copies of each of the other editions that the author might have revised. Every edition of the work has been subjected to as thorough a bibliographical study as possible. All the known information about the printing and publication of the texts has been gathered. The texts have been subjected to oral and ocular collation, and to collations using the light-table, the Hinman collator, and the computer. Specialists from the University's Computing Services have developed several programs to help in the proofreading and comparison of texts, to perform word-searches, and to compile and store much of the information for the concluding apparatus. The edited text, printed from a magnetic tape prepared at Carleton, has been proofread against its copy-text at all appropriate stages.

Editor's Preface

My interest in the life and writings of Susanna Strickland Moodie began three decades ago, thanks to the teaching and the suggestions of Professor Carl Klinck at the University of Western Ontario. I was, therefore, delighted to be asked by Professor Mary Jane Edwards, in the winter of 1980, if I would be interested in joining the CEECT project as the editor of Roughing It in the Bush. I accepted with pleasure and continued my long-standing pursuit of Moodie materials, extending it now to the study of copies of the various editions of the work, the evolution of the text, and the intriguing task of annotation. The search took me to Toronto, Peterborough, Belleville, Kingston, and Ottawa for copies of Moodie texts and for sites formerly occupied by the Moodies. In the fall of 1980 I went to England where I was able to study the Richard Bentley Papers in the British Library for letters and documents pertinent to Roughing It in the Bush, as well as to research other aspects of Susanna's literary career in the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Public Record Office. The search included visits to homes once occupied by the Stricklands and their friends and relatives both in Suffolk and in London. On subsequent occasions I have continued the search for Susanna's letters and published work, for reviews of her books, and for the records of her publishers in the American Antiquarian Society Library, Worcester, Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library, Harvard University Library, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. In addition I have spent many hours in the Archives of Ontario looking for material essential to the annotation of Roughing It in the Bush. Many institutions and individuals have contributed to my research and the preparation of this scholarly edition of Roughing It in the Bush. Carleton University and the Social Sciences and xiii

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EDITOR'S PREFACE

Humanities Research Council of Canada, through their support of CEECT, have provided me with money for travel and subsistence and research costs. I am grateful to both these institutions, and, in fact, doubly so to the Council, for it supported the Susanna Moodie letters project during much of the research period of the edition and it was never possible for me to be working on one undertaking without also working on the other, so inextricably connected were they. For this reason I am deeply thankful also to my colleagues in the letters project, Professor Elizabeth Hopkins (Glendon College, York University) and Professor Michael Peterman (Trent University), for sharing their research with me, and for the pleasure of working with them. I am grateful to the librarians and archivists at several institutions. Carleton University; Massey College, University of Toronto; McGill University; McMaster University; the National Library of Canada; the Peterborough Public Library; Queen's University; and the University of Toronto lent CEECT copies of rare editions of Roughing It in the Bush and allowed them to be microfilmed or collated. My thanks go as well to Jeremy Palin of Carleton University for lending his copy of the 1871 edition, and to the National Archives of Canada for permitting CEECT to use their Central Microfilming Unit in Ottawa. I also wish to thank particularly the librarians in Rare Books and Special Collections at the Metropolitan Toronto Library and Trent University Library for making available editions of Susanna Moodie's work and other materials. Liana Van Der Bellen and her colleagues in the Rare Book Room at the National Library of Canada deserve special recognition for their generosity in allowing me, Professor Edwards, and two members of the CEECT staff to go through their newly-acquired collection of Moodie papers even before it was completely catalogued. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the National Archives of Canada for permission to reproduce a map of "the District of Newcastle, Upper Canada," drawn by F. P. Rubidge in c. 1833, and the National Library of Canada for permission to reproduce its watercolour of a portrait of Susanna made probably in the 1820s.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

xv

In October 1981 I attended an Informal Colloquium on copytext sponsored by CEECT and held at Carleton University. The colloquium was conducted by Professor David Nordloh (Indiana University), general editor of The Centenary Edition of W. D. Howells. Professor Nordloh's comments on that and other occasions have been most helpful to me in grappling with the thorny issue of the choice of copy-text for Roughing It in the Bush. Participants in the Public Workshop on Editorial Principles and Procedures, also sponsored by CEECT and held at Carleton in May 1983, are likewise thanked for contributions to the debate on the copy-text problem. I am very grateful to Mary Jane Edwards for her invaluable advice, for her editorial skills, and for the dedication and hard work she has given to this volume and to the project as a whole. She and the members of her editorial board are making an extremely important contribution to Canadian literary studies. They have been assisted in their efforts by hard-working and enthusiastic members of the CEECT staff, past and present. Heather Avery, Joseph Black, Jennifer Fremlin, Andrew KerrWilson, Marion Phillips, and John Thurston performed collations, wrote reports, and solved many of the annotation problems of Roughing It in the Bush. Mary Comfort typed drafts of the introduction and patiently entered versions of the text on the computer; in the latter task she was assisted by Batoul Zanganeh. Timothy J. Murphy and Nadia Shewchenko looked after the numerous computing tasks involved in the preparation of the edition. Part of my pleasure in working on Roughing It in the Bush lies in the realization that it is an historical document and that the people and places delineated in the book were known to Susanna. Furthermore, the places can be visited and seen. The house that the Moodies occupied in Hamilton Township still stands and Phoebe Harris' grave is there beside the brook Susanna saw from her window. I wish to thank Norma Martin, Catherine Milne, and Donna McGillis for guiding me to the Hamilton Township site, and Professor Gordon Roper for taking me on a tour of the

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EDITOR'S PREFACE

Douro Township sites known to the Moodies. I am further indebted to Professor Roper for supplying information on the family of Lieutenant Colonel John Caddy, a neighbour of the Moodies in Douro. I am also grateful to Edward Dahl and Ric Hamilton for their help with the maps, and to Anne Dondertman for her assistance with the bibliographical descriptions. Finally, I thank my wife, Dorothy, and my children, Kurt and Marnin, for their patience and support during the seven years of my work on Susanna Moodie and Roughing It in the Bush. Carl A. Ballstadt McMaster University October 1987

Editor's Introduction

On 1 July 1832 Susanna Strickland Moodie (1803-85)' sailed from the port of Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband, John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie (1797-1869), and their first child to take up residence in Upper Canada. Twenty years later, Roughing It in the Bush, a classic depiction of pioneer life in Canada and a major piece of autobiography, was published in London by Richard Bentley. Susanna had met Dunbar in the early summer of 1830 at the home of a mutual friend, Thomas Pringle, an author and at the time Secretary to the Anti-Slavery League.2 She was a guest in Pringle's home on one of her periodic visits to London to pursue her literary activities. Dunbar, who had emigrated to South Africa in 1819, had recently returned to Britain with the threefold intention of writing an account of his adventures, finding a compatible wife, and returning to "Groote Valley," his South African farm.3 Dunbar and Susanna were immediately attracted to one another, and by the end of July, when Susanna returned to her Suffolk home, Reydon Hall, near Southwold, they were planning to marry in the spring of 1831 and were discussing the idea of living in South Africa.4 By October 1830, after Dunbar had visited his uncle in the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland, their discussion also included the possibility of living there. Susanna was willing to entertain either prospect: "I should be happy with Dunbar anywhere if beneath the burning suns of Africa or building a nest among the eagles of the storm encircled Orkneys."5 In spite of such a confident assertion, within a few months Susanna had changed her mind. In January 1831 she wrote to her friends Emma and James Bird that she had broken her engagement and that she would "neither marry a soldier nor leave my country for ever."6 Susanna's change of mind was caused by a number of factors, xvii

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

including her own literary ambitions. About the time that she broke her engagement, she moved to London in order to bring to fruition Enthusiasm; And Other Poems, a book on which she had long been working and which was published in 1831.7 But the estrangement between Susanna and Dunbar was mainly prompted by his literary activity, one of the qualities that made him attractive to her. He had begun his narrative of his life in South Africa, and according to Dunbar, it was his vivid description of the dangers of South Africa that aroused Susanna's latent dislike of the country and, because the "wild animals were her terror," sparked her temporary refusal to emigrate.8 Susanna's resolution was not firm, however, and within a few weeks she had changed her mind yet again. She and Dunbar were married in St. Pancras Church, London, on 4 Apr. 1831.9 Following their marriage the Moodies were compelled to decide how and where they were to live. Dunbar, who had served in the Napoleonic wars as a subaltern in the 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, had now only the income of a half-pay officer, which was "too small to supply the wants of a family; and if of a good family, not enough to maintain his original standing in society" (CEECT, pp. 207-08). Their only prospects were literary, and the financial return from such endeavours was too meagre and unpredictable to sustain them in the social status that they had enjoyed. The necessity for emigration was clear. Because she had "many dear friends in that land 'of the mountain and the flood'," including her brother, Susanna was willing to go to Canada. Samuel Strickland had emigrated in 1825 and had given her "such superb descriptions of Canadian scenery" that she had often longed "to accept his invitation to join him."10 During the summer of 1831, therefore, the Moodies moved from London and rented a cottage in South wold, which overlooked the North Sea and was "a pleasant walk from Reydon."" Susanna was pregnant, and, while awaiting the birth of their child, she and Dunbar planned their emigration to Canada. Samuel acted as agent for Dunbar in acquiring 500 acres of backwoods land for which he qualified as a military officer.12 The land, including

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

XIX

"146 acres of excellent land fronting a small lake" and close to Samuel's grant, had been secured by 9 Mar. 1832.13 The Moodies' first child, Catherine Mary Josephine, was born 14 Feb. 1832; by May they were ready to leave. They arranged to take passage off the Suffolk coast in a ship bound from London to Edinburgh, there to examine various vessels and choose one for their voyage to Canada. The Moodies' choice proved a safe one, but the voyage was long. It took from the first of July until the end of August, chiefly because their ship was becalmed for three weeks off the coast of Newfoundland. 14 The Moodies intended to become backwoods settlers immediately upon arriving in Canada. Accounts of the difficulties of that life, however, which they must have heard along the way and upon their arrival in Cobourg, Upper Canada, in early September 1832, caused them to alter their plans. Within a few days of their arrival, Dunbar had entered into an arrangement with Charles Clark, a land dealer in Cobourg, to purchase a cleared farm on the fourth concession in Hamilton Township, approximately four miles from Lake Ontario. The Moodies' unfamiliarity with North American social customs and language, and their vastly different tastes and personal habits led to uncongenial and even hostile relationships with their neighbours. These included many who had lived in the area for thirty years or more, like Joseph Harris, the man whose farm they had purchased, and squatters like Willard and Roswell Seaton, their immediate neighbours, who were more recent inhabitants of the area and unscrupulous in their ways. The Moodies' discomfort was so great that in spite of their intuition that a cleared farm and proximity to settled communities better suited their physical capabilities, by the autumn of 1833, after only a year in Hamilton Township, they were planning to move. Dunbar visited Douro Township, on the eastern side of the Otonabee River and north of the small community of Peterborough, to examine his backwoods holdings and to arrange for the purchase of an additional lot close to broken Lot 21, Concession 6, where he intended to build his house. They

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

would live about a mile to the northeast of Susanna's sister and close companion, Catharine Parr, and her husband, Thomas Traill, a Scotsman and fellow-officer of Dunbar, who had also emigrated to Upper Canada in 1832. Samuel and his family would also be near neighbours. Even though the Moodies realized the living conditions would be more severe, the move was motivated by the desire to have contact both with relatives and other recent English immigrants of like interests and tastes. The Hamilton Township farm was sold back to Charles Clark in November 1833, and they moved into the backwoods early in February 1834. The Douro experience was characterized by the harsh conditions of the wilderness, the unpredictability of the elements, and the difficult processes of clearing the land and trying to get it to yield productively. The outbreak of rebellion in Upper Canada in December 1837 in the midst of this backwoods period both aggravated the severe conditions under which the Moodies lived and helped to alleviate them. While Dunbar served with the militia during much of 1838, Susanna looked after the farm. In the autumn of 1839 Dunbar received the appointment to the shrievalty of the Victoria District, and Susanna and the children set out on 1 Jan. 1840 to join him in the town of Belleville. In Roughing It in the Bush, Susanna relates these experiences of emigration and settlement from 1832 to 1840. Although emigration was a traumatic experience for Susanna, she could not and did not relinquish the interest in writing that had governed so much of her life. She had begun to write while she was a young girl, and her first book, Spartacus: A Roman Story (1822), was published before she turned twenty. By 1830 she had published several books of entertainment and moral instruction, she had contributed numerous stories and poems to the popular annuals and gift books of the time, and she had been acknowledged as a writer of promise in literary circles such as those in which Thomas Pringle moved.15 It is not surprising, then, that poems written by Susanna before she emigrated appeared in the Cobuurg Star shortly after her arrival in Upper Canada,16 and

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that, within the first year of her residence, poems based on her new experiences were published in such newspapers as the Albion and the Emigrant and Old Countryman, two New York publications designed for immigrants.17 The Canadian Literary Magazine was also the recipient of new work by Susanna.18 These items, frequently reprinted in Canadian newspapers, made her name familiar to Canadians and Americans alike. In the December 1834 issue of the North American Quarterly Magazine, Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, its editor, published an article on Susanna's poetry that included three of her poems. He apparently sent her a copy along with a solicitation for more of her work. Susanna responded, and eleven of her poems appeared in the magazine in the next two years.19 She also sent new work back to England for publication in the Lady's Magazine, which for several years in the 1830s was edited by her sisters Eliza and Agnes.20 The most dramatic impetus to the advancement of Susanna's literary reputation was the outbreak of rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada in late 1837. Her loyal British spirit roused her to write a number of patriotic poems that were first published in the Palladium of British America and widely circulated.21 These brought her to the attention of John Lovell, whose Montreal Transcript reprinted the poems, and he sought her as a contributor to the Literary Garland, the periodical he launched at the end of 1838. Two of her poems, "The Otonabee" and "The Oath Of The Canadian Volunteers. A Loyal Song For Canada," appeared in the May 1839 issue. Thereafter, she was one of the Garland's most prolific contributors of both poetry and prose until its demise at the end of 1851.22 Susanna also wrote many pieces for the Victoria Magazine that she edited with Dunbar from September 1847 to August 1848. Several of Susanna's contributions to these newspapers and periodicals pertain to Roughing It in the Bush. Poems on such subjects as the emigrants' departure, their arrival in the new world, their expectations, and aspects of their backwoods life that appeared from 1833 to 1839 became part of this autobiographical account.23 As well, two series of sketches, six "Canadian

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Sketches" in the Literary Garland from January to October 1847, and two "Scenes In Canada" in the Victoria Magazine in September and November 1847, were the basis for eleven of the twentynine chapters that form the longer work.24 Creating series of sketches was not a new undertaking for Susanna. In "Canadian Sketches" and in "Scenes In Canada" she was continuing a literary genre that she had employed earlier and that she now found highly adaptable to her Canadian experiences. The most famous practitioner of the genre was Mary Russell Mitford, the author of Our Village: Sketches Of Rural Character And Scenery, published in five volumes between 1824 and 1832. Susanna admired Miss Mitford's work and emulated it in her own "Sketches from the Country," a series of five pieces published in La Belle Assemblee Or Court And Fashionable Magazine, a London periodical edited by Thomas Harral to which she submitted a great deal of prose and poetry in the late 1820s.25 The "Sketches" are narrated in the first person by an observer familiar with customs and characters in Suffolk. In "No. IV The Dead Man's Grave," for example, she indicates that the grave is to be found "at the end of a long narrow lane, in the wellknown village of Reydon, where four cross country roads terminate, in the entrance to Goose Green."26 In "The Sailor's Return; Or, Reminiscences Of Our Parish," a sketch about Suffolk published in the Literary Garland in 1841, she writes, "As one of the chroniclers of my parish, it behooves me to act like a faithful and impartial biographer, not merely regarding with interest the memoirs of the rich and great, but condescending to men and women of low estate."27 Such comments indicate that Susanna thought of herself chiefly as a chronicler of the life that she had observed and found interesting. The lives of settlers in Hamilton and Douro gave Susanna another rich opportunity to observe "men and women of low estate" suffering "the dictates of nature" and to experience "necessity, the stern nurse of the hardy."28 Although the Canadian sketches contain some personal detail and reference to specific events, they emphasize an entertaining delineation of

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

xxiii

unusual characters. "Old Woodruff And His Three Wives," for example, begins with an extensive description of the physical appearance of the man. Although she continues the piece by telling when and how she met him during her journey from the woods to Belleville at the beginning of 1840, Susanna basically uses these details to get back to Old Woodruff and to convey his history and character. A similar primacy is given to colourful characters in all the other sketches. Early in "The Walk To Dummer," the story of the walk necessitates "A slight sketch of my old favorite [Jenny Buchanan] . . . and as it is drawn from life, I shall not hesitate in presenting it to my readers."29 In "Our Borrowing," the account of borrowing incidents demands "a slight sketch" of Betty B , "another incorrigible borrower."30 Sketches of characters are introduced in this deliberate manner, or with more indirect dramatic and narrative techniques. The indication is clear that sketches have to do chiefly with the character of actual living persons, so that even a piece that seems at first to be about a custom, such as "Our Borrowing," is essentially a series of character sketches. Only in "Tom Wilson's Emigration" is there a significant exception as Susanna provides a rather long discourse on the causes of emigration before introducing the reader to Tom Wilson's history. Although these sketches were not published until 1847, they — and other prose material that she eventually incorporated in Roughing It in the Bush — may have been written much earlier. In her introduction to Life In The Clearings Versus The Bush (1853), for example, Susanna observes that "when the greatest portion of 'Roughing it in the Bush* was written, [she] was totally ignorant of life in Canada, as it existed in the towns and villages."31 When she did begin to think about the making of a book on Canada, Susanna had many literary models as well as her own to consider. Among the dozens of works written to satisfy the British market for books about North America, the most suitable models were narratives by literary English women about their experiences in the new world. The prototypical work is Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners Of The Americans, published in March 1832 in

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

the midst of the great tide of emigration to North America that brought the Moodies to Canada. Mrs. Trollope had spent five years in the United States, chiefly in Cincinnati. Although Susanna indicates that she "had not. . . read Mrs. Trollope's work on America" when she emigrated (CEECT, p. 214), she was familiar with it by the time she wrote much, perhaps all, of Roughing It in the Bush. As a critique of American society and manners written in a satirical vein, Domestic Manners Of The Americans may have served as a model for the satirical quality of Susanna's book. Mrs. Trollope's work was only one of several possible models available to Susanna in the 1830s, however. Catharine Parr Traill's The Backwoods Of Canada: Being Letters From The Wife Of An Emigrant Officer (1836), Harriet Martineau's Society In America (1837), and Anna Jameson's Winter Studies And Summer Rambles (1838) all depict North America from a woman's point of view. Like its antecedents, Roughing It in the Bush was, in many respects, a product of the 1830s. It bears some relationship to Domestic Manners Of The Americans, but closer parallels are to be found in the settlement narratives of other literary and genteel women who, like Susanna, confronted, not the commercial and social life of a burgeoning frontier town like Cincinnati, but the harsh and isolated conditions of newly settled areas or the unbroken backwoods. Mrs. Traill's The Backwoods Of Canada and Caroline Kirkland's A New Home — Who'll Follow? Or, Glimpses Of Western Life (1839), a depiction of settlement in Michigan, delineate the same procedures with respect to clearing land and building houses, the same pioneer social customs such as working bees, borrowing, and charivaris, the difficulties with servants, the ravages of the ague, and the crudity of neighbours. Style, attitude, and technique may differ, but the works have in common subject matter and intent. Susanna certainly alludes to her sister's work on more than one occasion, and she may well have known A New Home - Who'll Follow?.32 New Home — Who'llFollow?.32When Susanna decided to produce her book on emigration and settlement life, she revised her previously published poetry and prose. Since the poems were used to embellish and supple-

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ment the chapters of the book, they underwent only minor revisions. The prose was much more radically altered. Because Susanna chose to use her own life as an exemplum to warn prospective readers and potential emigrants in Britain of the vicissitudes of emigration to Canada, her material had to be given a chronological structure. Susanna rearranged some of the serialized pieces to give more emphasis to events in her own life and to sketch characters in their rightful place in the chronology. In rewriting "Old Woodruff And His Three Wives," for example, she retitled the piece "Adieu To The Woods," abbreviated Woodruff's role considerably by reporting that "he told us the history of his several ventures in matrimony, with which I shall not trouble my readers" (CEECT, p. 513), and made him and his wives a relatively minor incident in the account of her journey from the backwoods to her new home in Belleville. Attention to chronology also demanded the division of "Tom Wilson's Emigration" into two and "Uncle Joe And His Family" into three chapters of the book so that the revised sketches would better reflect stages of the Moodies' settlement in Hamilton Township and allow Susanna to highlight the characters of Old Satan, John Monaghan, and Phoebe H , as well as Tom and Uncle Joe. Another facet of the adaptation of the periodical material to book form was the addition of didactic and analytical observations to give the work status as an emigrant handbook. In "Canadian Sketches" and "Scenes In Canada" this dimension is almost exclusively represented by the opening page and a half of "Tom Wilson's Emigration," which address the causes of emigration and the appeal of Canada in Britain in the 1830s. These paragraphs became the "Introduction" to Roughing It in the Bush, but Susanna interjected more such commentary throughout the work, often in digressive passages. For example, in "The Walk To Dummer," she interrupts her sketch of Captain N , old Jenny's former master, with a discussion of the folly of an officer on half-pay selling his commission, as Dunbar had done, particularly if he is a backwoods settler, but she adds:

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This, although a long digression, will not, I hope, be without its use; and if this book is regarded not as a work of amusement but one of practical experience, written for the benefit of others, it will not fail to convey some useful hints to those who have contemplated emigration to Canada (CEECT, p. 468). Here is specific evidence of Susanna acknowledging the disparate character of her book and shaping her earlier material written chiefly to entertain Canadian readers to the cautionary motive she set for herself in addressing a British audience. As well as dividing the periodical material and adding to it, Susanna altered and elaborated detail and made hundreds of stylistic changes. Some revisions of the previously published pieces were aimed at making the book clearer or more vivid by substituting one word for another or describing objects, practices, and events more fully. Others appear to have been calculated to make it acceptable and appealing to her prospective British reading public. One noteworthy result of this revision was a considerable increase in Americanisms that contributed to the satiric portrayal of the Moodies' crude neighbours. These occurred chiefly in spellings and contractions. Almost invariably the "after" of the sketches became "arter," "came" was replaced by "cum," "home" by "hum," "our" by "our'n," "see" by "seed." Other changes made by Susanna rendered the narrative more exotic. "A place called Dummer"33 became "a place situated in the forest-depths of this far western wilderness, called Dummer" (CEECT, p. 463), and "extending for several miles along the forest road"34 was expanded to "extending upon either side for some miles through the darkest and most interminable forest" (CEECT, p. 463). "That season of the year"35 was altered to "this iron climate" (CEECT, p. 472). Many such revisions to the early version not only emphasized the sense of strangeness but also underlined the severity of the conditions that the Moodies had to endure. While most of the changes elaborate the delineation of the settler's life, a few reflect Susanna's concern for the Victorian

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sensibilities of her readers. These range from the minor replacement of a "Damn him!" by a "hang him!," to the deletion of a passage from "Brian, The Still Hunter" in which Ned Layton tells of removing "a piece of the flesh of his [Brian's] throat that had been carried into his wind-pipe" when he endeavoured to commit suicide, and of using a handkerchief "to stanch the blood."36 Susanna, sparing her readers the graphic description, writes, "Layton then detailed some particulars of his surgical practice which it is not necessary to repeat" (CEECT, p. 189). To the rewritten sketches she added fourteen entirely new chapters. Three were necessary to round out her account of the roughly sixteen months that the Moodies lived in Hamilton Township.37 The other eleven, which constituted most of the second half of the work, covered the almost six years they were in Douro.38 In addition to her own material Susanna incorporated into her work several pieces by Dunbar. These included poems, almost all previously published, and three items of prose. "The Old Dhragoon; Or, A Visit To The Beaver Meadow," a sketch set in Douro, had appeared in the Literary Garland in August 1844. "The Village Hotel" and "The Land-jobber," pertaining to their early weeks in Upper Canada, were hitherto unpublished. Like Susanna's, Dunbar's material may well have been written in the 1830s. Even before he emigrated to Canada, Dunbar was proposing to write a book on the colony. In a letter to his "dearest Susie," dated 24 May 1832, he reported that Alexander Elder, a partner in the firm of Smith, Elder, which had published Susanna's Enthusiasm; And Other Poems, was "still much inclined to have the kind of work I mentioned on Canada."39 Although nothing apparently came of these negotiations, Dunbar did not give up his idea. In November 1834 he offered a work on Canada to Richard Bentley. In the spring of 1835 Bentley, who published Dunbar's Ten Years In South Africa the same year, replied "that so much has lately been written on that country, as to make it doubtful how far such a book would succeed here," but he added, "should you follow up your plan, I should be happy to see the M.S."40 When Susanna was preparing Roughing It in the Bush,

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Dunbar apparently decided to hand over his pertinent items for inclusion in her work.41 Sometime between 1848 and early 1851 the manuscript was sent to John Bruce, a Londoner of Scottish extraction and an antiquarian scholar who was the author of several historical works.42 After sending the manuscript, Susanna asked Bruce to withdraw "Michael Macbride," one of the three new sketches she had prepared on Hamilton Township. This sketch had appeared in the February 1851 issue of the Literary Garland and Susanna had been severely reproved for the anti-Catholic sentiments she expressed in it by the True Witness and Catholic Chronicle in its issue of 21 February. This review prompted Susanna to "suppress" the piece "on account of the Catholics, who considered that story as written against them, although in every particular, it was strictly true.4343 Bruce, perhaps at the Moodies' suggestion, offered the shortened manuscript to Richard Bentley and negotiated on Susanna's behalf. By December 1851 Bentley had seen the manuscript and had had it assessed by readers. On 26 Dec. 1851 Bentley offered to publish "Mrs. Moodie's Canadian Life" on half profits.44 The next day Bruce responded to Bentley with a request for an advance "of £20 on account of the author's share of profits," and ten free copies of the published book, "five for author to be sent to America, and five for English friends."45 The same day Bentley agreed to both terms, his "note of hand at 2 months on Day of Publication of £20 on account of half profits for the author" to be sent to Bruce.46 Two days later, on 29 Dec. 1851, Bruce wrote again to Bentley to ask that a stipulation be added to the agreement "that Mrs. M is not to be called upon to repay the £20 in case of failure of profit." He also requested that the agreement be limited to ten years so that Susanna, who was looked upon as one of "the literary stars of Canada," might reprint the book there after that time.47 An agreement based on these negotiations was dated 9 Jan. 1852. It stipulated that profits be divided equally, after deductions from the sale for "the Charges from Printing, Paper, Adver-

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tisements, Embellishements, if any, and other Incidental Expenses, including the Allowance of Ten Per cent, on the gross amount of the Sale, for Commission and risk of Bad Debts." In a handwritten note on the standard agreement form Bentley also undertook to advance £20 payable two months from the date of publication, the sum not being subject to repayment in the event of the failure of the book to realize profit. He further acknowledged that Mrs. Moodie was to be allowed to reprint the book in Canada "after the expiration of ten years."48 "A Register of Agreements with Authors and Others" contains an entry for "Canadian Life" dated 9 Jan. 1852. It includes the notes: "Copyright in Canada (only) reverts to Mrs. Moodie after 10 yrs," and "P.M. [promissory note] in anticipation of Profits £20."49 Sometime between 9 Jan. and 28 Jan. 1852, the date of publication of Roughing It in the Bush, the first agreement was apparently replaced by a new arrangement. Early in February Bentley sent £50 to Bruce for the "Entire Copyrt." of the book, for which Bruce sent a receipt dated 7 February.50 There is no mention of the £20 advance in the receipt. It appears likely that the £20 advance was superseded by the £50 payment for full copyright, although Bentley also made a "Donation upon Roughing It in the Bush" of £50 in September 1852.51 The "Register of Agreements,"furthermore, makes note of a letter dated 19 Jan. 1852 in connection with Roughing It in the Bush, but no copy has been located.52 In addition, a letter from Susanna to Bentley dated 20 July 1852 indicates a difference between the agreement for a subsequent work, Mark Hurdlestone, and the earlier book. Susanna writes, "I am the better pleased with this proposal," which was to share the profits equally and to advance her £50 in a promissory note on the day of publication, the money not to be returned in the event of the book's failure.53 The agreement for Mark Hurdlestone also allowed for the possibility of further payment. As well as acting as Susanna's agent in negotiations, John Bruce did some editing of the manuscript, and probably proofread it as it went through the press. In his letter to Bentley of 27 Dec. 1851,

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Bruce said that he would "see" the book "through the press."54 When Bentley replied the same day, he promised to send the manuscript to Bruce for "revision," particularly "with the view of omitting some of the poetry." In responding to the publisher on 29 Dec. 1851, Bruce said that he had already cut "'softnesses'" from the manuscript. In this letter he also said that he would be willing to "go through the copy" with the "remarks" of Bentley's friend "in view."55 In both his letters to Bentley, Bruce offered to send the manuscript directly to the printers, Bradbury and Evans. While they were printing the work, Bentley set about promoting it. Advertisements began to appear in early January. In these announcements the work was entitled "ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH; or, Life in Canada"56 an important fact since it was being referred to as "Canadian Life" in the correspondence between Bentley and Bruce in late December and even in the publication agreement of 9 January. Susanna's title for the work is not known, but it is probable that Bentley himself devised the new title and composed the "Advertisement," dated "London, January 22, 1852," that was included at the beginning of the work. Bradbury and Evans printed 2,250 copies of Roughing It in the Bush, and Bentley published it on 28 Jan. 1852 in two volumes selling at £1 Is. The work received considerable recognition in the journals of the day. The reviews were generally favourable, although there were a few objections. The reviewer in the Spectator found "too much of description and reflection in the volumes" but approved its "lively style" and its "domestic charm." He remarked emphatically on the unsuitability of both the Moodies for the emigrant's life and manifested some degree of impatience with what was perceived as the book's tone of complaint, although, on the basis of excerpts, the reviewer seemed to find most interesting the rough conditions and persons encountered in the emigrant's experience. Special emphasis was given to Susanna's description of the Grosse Isle scenes that revealed her disillusion.57 The reviewer in the Literary Gazette was more favourably disposed and sympathetic to the author. Her work was perceived

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as a "domestic romance" in which "love in a cottage," a well-worn theme, had been transported to "the chilly atmosphere of a loghut in an American forest" and given a treatment that emphasized the heroic role of the emigrant's wife. The Gazette considered the book one of "great originality and interest," and represented much of the content of the first volume with generous excerpts and connecting comments.58 Reservations of a serious kind emerged in the Observer which, in one of the longest reviews, took exception to what the reviewer considered Mrs. Moodie's anti-Irish bias: For instance at the very outset of her career, she describes the Irish emigrants in terms which a reflective writer would scarcely apply to a pack of hounds — as "filthy beings sullying the purity of the air and water (of Grosse Isle), with contaminating sights and sounds," as "incarnate devils" — with "no shame" — under "no restraint" — "such thieves that they rob one another of the little they possess" — "vicious, uneducated barbarians, far behind the wild man (Indian savage) in delicacy of feeling and natural courtesy;" and yet every page of her work bears distinct and unequivocal testimony to the fact that it was to the kindness, the charity, and the disinterested services of poor Irish emigrants and settlers that she and her family were indebted for, perhaps, the only real benevolence they had encountered in Canada. Despite his reservations, the reviewer called it "one of the most valuable books hitherto published on that ever-novel, and always interesting subject, the customs and manners of large classes of people." The review closes with a brief summary of the Moodies' circumstances and movements and with further acknowledgement of the work's two facets: all those who desire to emigrate to Canada should peruse this book; while all those who acknowledge the charm of keen observation, combined with a lively style of narrating incidents, should not fail to make themselves acquainted with its contents.

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The review includes two other important points: the observation of Susanna's connection with Agnes Strickland, which undoubtedly fostered sales, and which Susanna took advantage of by dedicating her book to her sister, and the view that the work was representative in that the best descriptive pieces on Canada were written by women.59 Another significant insight was expressed by the reviewer in the Athenaum when he commented that Susanna's "gifts" as a writer "helped the emigrant's wife" in coping with the bush and "prevented her from sinking into that sluggish acquiescence in the drudgery of her lot."60 The only major quarterly to review Roughing It in the Bush was Blackwood's Magazine, which gave it prominent attention in an eleven-page article, "Forest Life In Canada West," in its March 1852 issue.61 The reviewer, Frederick Hardman,62 included numerous passages of text interspersed with summaries of character and action together with lavish praise of Susanna's moral courage and good humour in the face of trying experiences and crude neighbours. He emphasized the exotic character of life in the "Far West of Canada," and cited the virtues of its heroine as an example to the "ladies of Britain." The extremely positive character of the review undoubtedly did much to promote sales of the book in Britain. It may well have been the review in Blackwood's, which had a good circulation in North America, that brought Roughing It in the Bush to the attention of George Putnam and prompted him to bring out an American edition. It was published in two parts on 1 and 15 July 1852 in Putnam's "Semi-Monthly Library for Travellers and the Fireside" series. The content, however, was much altered, this time for an American readership, by Putnam's editor, Charles Frederick Briggs. He deleted Dunbar's "Ould Dhragoon" from the second volume, omitted many of the epigraphs to chapters, and retained only six of the thirty-seven poems included in the Bentley edition. In a brief preface "C.F.B." explained his reasons for reducing the text: The accomplished and heroic author will not ... be disposed to complain that her work should have undergone a

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careful excision of certain passages of a purely personal or political character, which could have possessed no interest for the American reader, and the loss of which will be compensated by the gain of a larger audience than she could have otherwise hoped for. Mrs. Moodie is a true heroine, and her simple narrative is a genuine romance, which has all the interest of an imaginative creation.63 Briggs' effort was to emphasize the character of Roughing It in the Bush as a "far-west" romance and to play down the features that made it an emigrant handbook. Susanna had no involvement in the American edition; she, in fact, did not see a copy of the English edition until a visitor "presented" her "with his," probably in June 1852.64 In a letter that Putnam wrote to her in July 1852, after his edition was published, he announced, "If the present state of copy right laws, had been such, as to give any suitable protection, I should have been glad to have made such arrangements with you, as would have served for you, a proper remuneration, for the American edition of your work." Instead he had sent "10 copies" to her and would send "an additional number," if she wished. He also drew attention to "the liberties taken by the Editor" and trusted that she would not be "displeased" with them, for "if sins, they are sins of omission only."65 The Putnam edition did achieve a very considerable popularity. Following its publication in his "Semi-Monthly Library," Putnam issued the work in cloth and paper wrappers in his "Popular Library" and "Library of Popular Travels" series. He kept the work in print at least until 1854, when an issue dated 1854 included the statement "9th Thousand" on its title-page. Plates made from his edition, furthermore, were used in several later impressions of the book brought out by other publishers in the United States. As part of Putnam's well-advertised "Semi-Monthly Library for Travellers and the Fireside," Susanna's book was widely reviewed in literary journals and newspapers in the United States

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and the British North American provinces. For the American reviewers much of the appeal of Roughing It in the Bush lay in its exotic quality as an account of "dangers and discomforts of a life in the far-west of Canada,"66 but within this account they discerned the physical and moral victory of a cultivated sensibility and intellect "over the ills of uncivilized life."67 Susanna was seen as both heroic in the face of adversity and successful as a writer, whose skills in her description of "the beauties of nature," the narration of backwoods events, and the humorous delineation of character were worthy of the sister of Agnes Strickland.68 The Putnam edition was widely distributed in British North America. At least three booksellers in Montreal, for example, B. Dawson, John Armour, and D. & J. Sadlier, had it for sale in the summer of 1852.69 Although Susanna expressed a sense of disappointment in the reception of her book in Canada,70 Canadian reviews of the American edition echoed the British and American ones in praising her for her skills in description and narration. At least two of them also took Charles Briggs to task for distorting the book for Canadian readers by omitting expressions of Susanna's loyalty and "the genuine information on Canadian affairs which it supplied," and hence giving an erroneous impression that Susanna blamed the country for her family's misfortunes instead of "her own want of means to meet the toils which she boldly encountered."71 Another reviewer, the Reverend Robert Jackson McGeorge of the Anglo-American Magazine, saw in Roughing It in the Bush "as good a lounging book for a warm summer's evening, as any modern novel" and observed that it was the work of "one of the most distinguished pioneers of Canadian literature."72 The favourable reception of the book prompted Richard Bentley to issue a second impression, which he called a "Second Edition, With Additions," on 29 Nov. 1852. For this impression a number of changes were made to the standing type of the first impression, and new material was added. The principal new content was a concluding chapter entitled "Canadian Sketches." In response to a suggestion by John Bruce that the Moodies

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include a piece "upon the present state of the country,"73 Dunbar had revised and expanded an essay on emigration that he had written in 1836.74 The chapter, sent to Bruce later than the main manuscript, apparently did not arrive in time for inclusion in the first impression. Instead Bentley published "Canadian Sketches" in two parts in the September and October 1852 issues ofBentley's Miscellany before incorporating it at the end of Vol. II of the second impression of Roughing It in the Bush. Along with "Canadian Sketches," Susanna had sent "a true and pathetic narrative, entitled 'Jeanie Burns,' together with many interesting anecdotes of persons, who at sundry limes, and under my own knowledge, had been lost in the woods."75 She intended this chapter to replace "Michael Macbride," the one that she had earlier withdrawn from Roughing It in the Bush, but instead of including it in the new impression, Bentley published it in the August issue of his Miscellany as "Jeanie Burns." Two years later, on 29 July 1854, he issued the second impression again; he called this issue, however, the "Third Edition, With Additions." The two volumes were bound in one and sold at the reduced price of 10s 6d. On 10 Aug. 1857 Bentley published a new edition in one volume. It was issued in cloth at 3s and in boards at 2s; the latter issue was part ofBentley's Popular New Series Of Two Shilling Volumes."76 The text was considerably reduced by the omission of most of the poetry. Bentley seems to have printed 10,000 copies of the edition. On 1 Oct. 1857, according to his "Publication Ledger," he had 6,245 copies on hand. On 30 June 1858, less than a year later, that number was reduced to 4,943. The "Ledger" also reports a copyright debit of £30, which was probably paid to Susanna in recognition of the book's success.77 Meanwhile, Roughing It in the Bush was doing well in North America. In 1854 the reprint publishers, DeWitt and Davenport, purchased the plates of the Putnam edition. The next year, when they had five of Susanna's books in print, they claimed to be "the sole publishers of her works in America."78 They issued an impression of Roughing It in the Bush in at least two different cloth casings sometime between 1854 and 1857. Another impression

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appeared under the imprint of Robert M. DeWitt sometime between 1857 and 1861, and a third between 1870 and 1877. In the 1880s the plates of the Putnam edition were bought by the John W. Lovell Company; "Lovell's Library, A Tri-Weekly Publication of the Best Current and Standard Literature" published Vol. I as No. 1074, Roughing It In The Bush; Or, Life In Canada, and Vol. II as No. 1076, Life In The Backwoods, both probably in 1887. Another impression of the Putnam may have been issued by Munro of New York in the "Seaside Library" series. Probably in the late spring of 187179 George Rose, of Hunter, Rose Company of Toronto, began negotiating with Susanna about preparing a new edition of Roughing It in the Bush for the Canadian market. Susanna agreed to Rose's proposition and used a copy of the second impression of the first Bentley edition to revise her work. She took this opportunity to correct mistakes in the earlier edition and to effect changes that she thought would make Roughing It in the Bush more acceptable to her Canadian readers by striking out "many objectionable passages" that might "arouse their anger."80 At the request of Rose, or of her son-in-law John Vickers,81 she also wrote a new introduction entitled "Canada. A Contrast" to bring the work up to date and to celebrate Canadian achievement since the late 1840s. Along with the new preface, Susanna provided a new epigraph that would help to foster the book's Canadian identity by focusing on the potentiality of the country rather than the homesickness of the emigrant: The poor exiles of wealthy and over-populous nations have generally been the first founders of mighty empires. Necessity and industry producing greater results than rank and affluence, in the civilization of barbarous countries. Rose wanted a one-volume edition, and Susanna tried to accommodate his wishes by cutting much of the poetry and Dunbar's "The Village Hotel," "The Land-jobber," and "Canadian Sketches." In August 1871, however, she told Rose, "The book cannot be more curtailed than it is now without spoiling

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it."82 Nevertheless, the abridgement was not all Rose's idea. Other comments show that, as she was editing the copy, Susanna became aware of a new kind of possibility for Dunbar's material. On 10 Aug. 1871, she told Richard Bentley, "I will write a short memoir of my dear husband, by way of preface and arrange the papers on Canada he left unfinished, and send the MSS for your perusal." Dunbar's "contributions to Roughing It" she added, "would come in better in this work entirely his own."83 The only sketch by Dunbar that she retained for the new edition was "The "Ould Dhragoon"," the one most similar, in manner and content, to her own sketches of unusual characters. This new edition was printed by Hunter, Rose and published jointly by them, Dawson Brothers of Montreal, and Thomas Maclear of Toronto in late 1871. Susanna received "200 dollars for the publication of 2500 copies and a Royalty of 4 cents on every copy they may require over the above number."84 The work has been the basis for subsequent Canadian editions. The 1871 edition played a significant role in sustaining and renewing Susanna's reputation as an important Canadian author. Although she had earlier expressed disappointment with the reception of her writing on Canada and in 1861 told Henry Morgan that she did not wish to be included in his "list of Canadian worthies,"85 by the 1870s her hopes for success were restored by the interest in Roughing It in the Bush and the possibility of more of her work being made available.86 Her status as a pioneer of Canadian literature87 was advanced by the new edition because, as the reviewer in the Canadian Monthly And National Review noted, the book offered "an interesting picture of a by-gone time, graphically painted," and in a new introduction Susanna gave a "defence of her motives in writing and publishing the work" that made it more acceptable to Canadians. As a result of the changes Susanna had made, the reviewer recognized that the note of warning to prospective immigrants in the book was really secondary to the "keen appreciation of the humorous," and the "air of verisimilitude about the narrative which gives a zest to its incidents and inspires the reader with confidence in the author."88

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Confidence in Roughing It in the Bush and in Susanna, both in Canada and elsewhere, has, in part, been expressed by the many reprintings of the book.89 The first twentieth-century edition, based on the 1871 version, was printed in Edinburgh by T. N. Foulis Company. It was published in 1913 in Edinburgh by Foulis, in New York by the Dodge Publishing Company, and in Toronto by Bell and Cockburn. It had illustrations by R. A. Stewart, portraits of Susanna and Dunbar, and a foreword by W. C. Bell, in which he cited the "steadily increasing demand for Canadiana" as well as the literary excellence of the book as reasons for the new edition. McClelland and Stewart of Toronto acquired the plates of the 1913 edition and published two different issues in 1923. One, printed and bound by Warwick Bros, and Rutter of Toronto, contained the Stewart illustrations and reproductions of several prints by W. H. Bartlett; the other, printed and bound by Hunter, Rose Company, had "interesting reproductions of old plates"90 of Canadian scenes.91 A new British edition, abridged and edited by F. W. Ticknor, was published by Thomas Nelson of Edinburgh in 1932 in its "Teaching of English Series." It was issued again in 1938 as one of "Nelson's Classics." Carl Klinck abridged the 1923 McClelland and Stewart edition and wrote an introduction for their "New Canadian Library" edition in 1962. A photographic reprint of the first 1852 issue of the Putnam edition was published by Literature House/Gregg Press in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey in 1970; as well, microfilms of this 1852 issue were made by Lost Cause Press in Louisville, Kentucky in 1973. Coles Publishing Company of Toronto brought out a facsimile of the Bell and Cockburn edition in 1980 in "Coles Canadiana Collection." In 1986 Virago Press of London issued an abridged facsimile of the first Richard Bentley impression of 1852 in its "Virago Travellers" series, with an introduction by Margaret Atwood. The book's publishing history, then, manifests its international as well as its special Canadian appeal and significance. Its status as a Canadian classic has been acknowledged frequently by literary historians and critics. In "English-Canadian

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Literature" (1913), Thomas Marquis, recognizing the narrative strength of this "descriptive" work, observed that "even though the motive that inspired it no longer exists, it still remains a valuable book, a veritable Canadian classic."92 Comments by such early literary historians as R. P. Baker and V. B. Rhodenizer also affirmed the book as a Canadian classic. Baker, for example, in A History of English-Canadian Literature to the Confederation (1920), emphasized Susanna's "skill at portraiture,"93 description, and narration as well as her romantic perspective and expression. These men responded to the early charges of Susanna's antiCanadianism by observing the "gradual growth of a sympathetic attitude toward Canadian scenes and life"94 and a "final contentment with her adopted home."95 Clearly they were eager to see Susanna's work as one that would contribute to a "sense of nationality and unbounded faith in the future of Canada,"96 but their comments are also the first tentative steps in dealing with the structure of Roughing It in the Bush. Its continued prominence and importance in Canadian literary history are confirmed by the volume and variety of critical, biographical, and imaginative attention which it and its author have been given.97 Because Susanna was a member of a remarkable literary family and a principal in the notable literary production of the Peterborough area, she has often been discussed in these contexts. In her biography, Agnes Strickland (1940), Una Pope-Hennessy devoted a chapter to the Stricklands who emigrated to Canada; her book, together with Jane Margaret Strickland's earlier biography, Life of Agnes Strickland (1887), yields a useful impression of the family background and upbringing as well as the fame of the Strickland name. Further biographical attention to Susanna is to be found in Blanche Hume's The Strickland Sisters (1929), G. H. Needler's Otonabee Pioneers: The Story of the Stewarts, the Stricklands, the Traills and the Moodies (1953), Audrey Morris' Gentle Pioneers: Five Nineteenth-Century Canadians (1968), Clara Thomas' "The Strickland Sisters" (1966),98 and Carl Ballstadt's "Literary History of the Strickland Family" (1965).99 Perspectives on her life and work have also been

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provided in Michael Peterman's "Susanna Moodie (1803-1885)" (1983) 100 and in Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime (1985), edited by Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Peterman.101 Susanna has been a subject in Canadian biographical dictionaries from the time of Morgan's Sketches Of Celebrated Canadians (1862). The style and literary classification, the structure of Roughing It in the Bush, and the personality and psychological state of the narrator have been explored in Canadian literary criticism. Both book and author have been perceived as remarkably complex and adaptable as special interests and close analysis have been brought to bear upon them, albeit chiefly in the abridged version of the "New Canadian Library Series." In "Roughing It With The Moodies" (1945) Edward McCourt enlarged upon the emphasis of early reviewers and historians by discussing the realistic quality of the book and the remarkable degree of restraint apparent in the writing of "one brought up in the tradition of Mrs. Hemans," although he challenged the idea of Roughing It in the Bush as a classic, "even in the loosest sense of the term."102 In "Local Colour In Canadian Fiction" (1959), William Magee too dwelt on the realistic and humorous dimension of Susanna's sketches of backwoods life and designated her work a prototype of the local colour genre in Canadian fiction, a model for subsequent Canadian writers, and a work with sociological value.103 In "The English Gentlefolk In The Backwoods Of Canada" (1959), Lloyd Scott explored the sociological value further by examining Roughing It in the Bush and similar works as vehicles for the dissemination of Victorian upper-middle-class attitudes.104 The political implications of Susanna's delineation of Canadian society is assessed by Robin Mathews in "Susanna Moodie, pink toryism, and nineteenth century ideas of Canadian identity" (1975).105 Several articles have endeavoured to classify and explore the book as an example of a particular genre, usually by comparison to another book: as a collection of sketches in the manner of Miss Mitford's rural sketches, Our Village?106 as a travelogue related in tone and content to Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners Of The

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Americans;107 as a book largely influenced by sentimental, gothic romances such as Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries Of Udolpho (1794);108 as an account of a quest for freedom comparable to other renditions of the cultured Englishwoman's experience of North America;109 and as a work valuable for its sociological content when viewed in the context of even fictional versions of the emigrant's experience such as Marcus Clarke's narrative about Australia, His Natural Life. 11 0 The tendency sometimes revealed in nineteenth-century reviews to see in Roughing It in the Bush novelistic or romance characteristics is explored further in the twentieth century chiefly by Carl Klinck in the "Introduction" to the "New Canadian Library" edition, by R. D. MacDonald in "Design And Purpose" (1972),111 and by Gerald Noonan in "Susanna And Her Critics: A Strategy Of Fiction For Roughing It In The Bush" (1980).112 The poetic response to the complexities and mysteries of Susanna Moodie's personality in Margaret Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) has, in conjunction with the "garrison mentality" identified by Northrop Frye,113 spawned several psychological/philosophical readings of Susanna as narrator and chief character of Roughing It in the Bush. For this purpose some critics have found it useful to compare Susanna's Roughing It in the Bush with her sister Catharine's The Backwoods Of Canada in order to shape the discussion and to measure a romantic, introspective, and intuitive Susanna against a naturalistic, objective, and rational Catharine. T. D. MacLulich does this in relation to the treatment of the "Crusoe fable" in the two works,114 while William Gairdner establishes the platform of differing religious outlooks as the basis for contrasting approaches to the same kind of experience.115 David Stouck sees in Susanna's personality a negativity toward Canada and a quality of fear and self-worthlessness characteristic of the "Canadian imagination."116 David Jackel disagrees with MacLulich, Gairdner, and Stouck in their preference for Susanna over Catharine as the more interesting or pertinent Canadian writer; he argues that the restraint, intellectual substance, and social conscience of Catharine is more

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characteristic of Canadians, and preferable to the sentimental, self-indulgent, and imitative Susanna.117 Carol Shields has also explored the personality of the narrator of Roughing It in the Bush in conjunction with characters in Susanna's fiction in Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision (1977), a study of the relations of the sexes and the motif of sexual role reversal. The importance of Roughing It in the Bush as a work of distinction and of enduring value in Canadian culture is demonstrated by the frequency of citation and commentary on it in broader studies. In large measure this frequency occurs because the subjects of migration and wilderness experience and the tension between emergent Canadian values and language and those of the metropolitan centres that affect them have continued to be major Canadian issues. As a vivid account of a particular pioneer experience in the nineteenth century, it has been a useful resource to Canadian historians. The ambivalent reception of Roughing It in the Bush on its first appearance in Canada has long since given way to respect and fascination.

THE TEXT The intention of this edition of Roughing It in the Bush is to provide the reader with a reliable text of one of Canada's bestknown settlement narratives. There is no known manuscript or proof, and only the versions of the text published during Susanna's lifetime can be considered for copy-text and as sources of authorial emendation. These are the poems and sketches published in periodicals in the 1830s and 1840s; the first edition published by Bentley, including its first and second impressions in 1852 and the second issue of the second impression in 1854; the Putnam edition of 1852, with its numerous later impressions; the Bentley edition of 1857; and the Canadian edition of 1871. Of these, the periodical pieces represent a version of less than half of Roughing It in the Bush, and the prose, which constitutes most of the serialized material, was radically altered by Susanna

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when she prepared the manuscript she sent to John Bruce. While a few readings in this material help solve problems in the later versions, to have used both the periodical pieces and the segments added for the book edition would have been an attempt to mix works of very different intentions and would have resulted in a strange hybrid. The extensive deletions of both poetry and prose made by Charles Frederick Briggs in the 1852 Putnam edition were done without Susanna's knowledge, and she had nothing to do with its subsequent impressions. Nor is there any evidence that Susanna was in any way involved in the shortened Bentley edition of 1857. Neither of these two editions, then, is useful as either copy-text or a source of emendations. The Canadian edition of 1871 can be used as a source of emendations, but it is not a suitable choice for copy-text because Susanna prepared it by revising a copy of the first edition. Only this edition, in fact, can be chosen as copy-text. The 1852 Bentley edition, then, is the basic copy-text for the CEECT edition.118 The use of the 1852 edition as copy-text, however, is complicated by several facts. Every sheet of the first impression has variant states. Changes were made to the standing type between the first and second impressions. New material was added to the second impression. "Jeanie Burns," the chapter that Susanna intended for the book, was never included. Because the first impression of the first edition is closest to Susanna's manuscript, this is the copy for most of the text in the CEECT edition. During the printing run of the first impression, sheets were being pulled and proofed and revisions transferred to the formes that both corrected obvious errors and increased the number of accidentals, particularly in regard to punctuation, in an apparent attempt to clarify and conventionalize Susanna's probably quite erratic pointing.119 In fact, no sheets in the first impression were left uncorrected, but when the copies of the impression were assembled, uncorrected and corrected sheets were bound together. For this reason, although some copies appear to be mostly made up of uncorrected sheets and others of corrected sheets, no copy may be said with certainty to represent

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the earliest state of Roughing It in the Bush. CEECT, therefore, uses as copy what appears to be the earliest, uncorrected state of each sheet in the first impression. Each sheet has been emended only to the extent of incorporating changes that corrected obvious errors. This policy is especially important with respect to matters of punctuation because whoever corrected the sheets effected many changes in the use of commas and exclamation marks. At many points in the corrected sheets exclamation marks replace commas, a change that suggests a much more excitable author than was probably the case. The "correcting" hand also added new punctuation, most of which was not essential. Since it is possible, however, that the proofreader was reading against Susanna's manuscript, the variants not incorporated into the text of the CEECT edition are listed in "Variants in Copy-text" in the concluding apparatus. Only a few of the large number of variants in the first impression affect meaning. In "Canada," the opening poem, for example, the narrator states either that "empires fast" or "empires vast" had "darkly pass'd";120 the latter has been accepted in the CEECT edition as the intended reading (CEECT, p. 9). Substantive variants also occur in the second volume of the first impression. In a passage describing the clothing of an old Indian, Susanna says either that he had "arranged" or "arrayed" himself "in a new blanket-coat" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 40); "arrayed" is the reading accepted (CEECT, p. 309). In the same chapter, Susanna's maid reports that an Indian is sitting either behind "the stone" or "the stove" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 42); "stove" is obviously correct and is the reading in this edition (CEECT, p. 311). In "Our Logging-Bee" Malachi Chroak, speaking in an Irish dialect to his imaginary bagpipes, yells, "is that the tune your taught your son?" in one variant and "you taught" in the other (1852a, Vol. II, p. 75); "you taught" has been accepted (CEECT, p. 340). Susanna's servant is named either "Mary Price" or "Mary Pine" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 143); the latter is the correct reading (CEECT, p. 397). When Susanna leaves for Belleville, she is accompanied on her journey by her brother Samuel; at one point, however, the

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first impression reads that either her "husband" or her "brother" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 287) "ran into" the house of "Old Woodruff"; this edition accepts "brother" as the obviously correct reading (CEECT, p. 511). The other changes that have been accepted correct obvious errors of punctuation, spelling, and other accidentals. The emendations made to this first impression in the CEECT edition are intended to produce a version of Roughing It in the Bush that is as consistent as possible with what can be ascertained about Susanna's intentions for the first edition from the evidence of the second impression, the 1871 edition, and her letters to Richard Bentley, the most substantial changes being based on the authority of the letters. Susanna did not get "a sight of" Roughing It in the Bush until she received the copy from her visitor in June 1852; by 20 July 1852 she had "gone carefully over the work" and enclosed in a letter to Bentley "a few corrections."121 Since she does not specify what those corrections were, there is no way of being certain that all the changes made in the second impression of the book were hers. Many changes were made to the standing type of the first impression before the new impression was printed. The type was manipulated to accommodate a passage of twenty-seven lines beginning with ""Pull away, my lads!"" and ending with "land of all our hopes,"122 that had been omitted at the end of Vol. I, Chapter I, in the first impression. "The Magic Spell," a poem that had been placed erroneously as the epigraph and used to give the title to the last chapter of the first impression, was now correctly placed at the close of "A Change In Our Prospects" (1852b, Vol. II, p. 274). The added passage in Chapter I effected a difference in lineation and pagination between the first and second impressions for 110 pages, and the repositioning of "The Magic Spell" at the end of Vol. II, Chapter XIII, and "Adieu to the Woods" at the beginning of Chapter XIV brought about another group of pages with different lineation. Further evidence of the handling of the standing type is provided by examples of type batter, type shift, and the loss of type, especially at the right margin of pages.

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The problem with respect to these changes between the first and second impressions is their sources. Were they a continuation of the attempt to "improve" the text already evident in the variants in the first impression? Did they occur as a result of a sweeping second check of the first impression against the manuscript by John Bruce or a Bentley proofreader? Or were the changes made as the result of the notations sent by Susanna? These questions cannot be answered with certainty. Each change made in the second impression, then, needs to be considered on the basis of correctness and the possibility that it emanated from Susanna. Several changes made in the second impression are of a kind that suggest Susanna's involvement, most notably a number of corrections in spelling and revisions of poems. "Kutchawanook" (1852a, Vol. II, pp. 17, 21, and 85) was altered to "Katchawanook" (1852b, Vol. II, pp. 17, 21, and 85); "Luchine" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 41) to "Lachine" (1852b, Vol. I, p. 42); "NatoF' (1852a, Vol. I, p. 82) to "Hotel" (1852b, Vol. I, p. 83); "Jah" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 36)to"John"(1852b,Vol. II, p. 36); "Mersey" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 138) to "Harvey" (1852b, Vol. II, p. 138), and "New England grant" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 235) to "U. E. grant"' (1852b, Vol. I, p. 235). In these cases Susanna's handwriting had probably been misread by the compositor and the errors not caught. They are errors that Susanna would have picked up immediately. The revisions of poetry are of a kind that one would certainly not attribute to a compositor, nor do they seem of the kind about which John Bruce, who had already cut out "softnesses," would have concerned himself. The most substantial change is the replacement of two lines in "The Lament Of A Canadian Emigrant" with four lines. "Hard indeed was the struggle, from thee forced to roam; / But for their sakes I quitted both country and home" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 77) becomes The stern voice of duty compell'd me to roam, From country and friends — the enjoyments of home; But faith in the future my anguish restrain'd And my soul in that dark hour of parting sustain'd (1852b, Vol. I, p. 78).

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The new lines are consistent with Susanna's poetic manner and with her view of her emigration as expressed in "The Charivari" where she writes, "I had bowed to a superior mandate, the command of duty; for my husband's sake, for the sake of the infant, whose little bosom heaved against my swelling heart, I had consented to bid adieu for ever to my native shores" (CEECT, p. 207). In "Oh! Can You Leave Your Native Land?," "And know the wave that bears us on / Will ne'er convey us back" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 15) becomes "And know the wave that heaves us on / Will never bear us back" (1852b, Vol. I, p. 15). In "The Sleigh-Bells," "The more" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 148) is corrected to "No more" (1852b, Vol. I, p. 148). In the epigraph to "The Wilderness, And Our Indian Friends," "dweller" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 19) is altered to "stern dweller" (1852b, Vol. II, p. 19), and in "The Burning Of The Caroline," "So," (1852a, Vol. II, p. 208) is altered to "Lo," (1852b, Vol. II, p. 208). These spelling and poetic changes are accepted in the CEECT edition both because some of them are necessary corrections and because they are probably changes sent by Susanna. Other emendations from the second impression involve corrections of such minor matters as hyphenation, quotation marks, and possessives. There is one major difference between the first and the second impression. This is the inclusion of "Canadian Sketches" in the latter. The CEECT edition accepts this piece as its concluding chapter, the position that Bentley gave it, in fulfillment of Susanna's intention, in the second impression. The copy for it is this impression. A number of emendations that Susanna made in the text of the first Bentley edition for the 1871 Canadian edition are accepted in the CEECT text. Some of these are corrections of fact such as the change in the size of the Brig Anne from "ninety-two tons" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 2) to "one hundred and ninety-two tons";123 the replacement of "sixty pounds" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 229) by "sixty dollars" (1871, p. 250) in the passage concerning the amount of money demanded by the revellers in "The Charivari"; the change from "St. Lewis" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 65) to "St. Louis" (1871, p. 92), the correct name for the castle at Quebec; the

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replacement of "Music" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 184) by "Music" (1871, p. 209) as the name of Brian's dog; and the change from "windows" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 198) to "window" (1871, p. 224) in the passage concerning the small shanty in which the Moodies lived before they were permitted to occupy their own home. Other emendations in the 1871 edition accepted in the CEECT edition were made to eliminate inconsistencies in spelling or to clarify meaning. "Jontlemen" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 14) was replaced by "jintlemen" (1871, p. 39) and "Maggy" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 39) by "Maggie" (1871, p. 65), for example. In a paragraph about the drying of a fish, "grease" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 54) was replaced by "grass," (1871, p. 314) and a similar correction was made where "stone pipes" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 161) had appeared instead of "stove pipes" (1871, p. 422). The unusual spelling, "chissmunk," (1852a, Vol. II, pp. 120, 244, and 272) which survived throughout the first Bentley edition, was corrected to "chipmunk" (1871, pp. 380, 495, and 518). In "The Outbreak" Susanna refers to a family to whom the Moodies owed money for clearing land. On two occasions (1852a, Vol. II, p. 194) they are referred to as "Y V and on another (1852a, Vol. II, p. 203) as "J V In the 1871 edition, picking up the inconsistency and avoiding the possible confusion with the "Youngs" who had been referred to earlier, she altered all three references to "Y y's" (1871, pp. 454 and 463). These and a few other changes in spelling and the use of quotation marks that are accepted in the CEECT edition reflect a fairly careful cleaningup of the text by Susanna and possibly her Canadian publishers. As well as making the kind of emendations that have been accepted in the CEECT edition, in 1871 Susanna further revised the Bentley edition by cutting out "objectionable passages" and by eliminating some of Dunbar's material. These revisions have not been accepted in the CEECT edition because they at least partly reflect Susanna's response to external pressure. In eliminating the "passages," she hoped to avoid arousing the "anger" of Canadians. And in reducing the size of the work, she was satisfying Rose's request for a one-volume edition, although in

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this process she began to change her intentions with regard to Dunbar's material. "Canada. A Contrast," however, the new introduction she wrote for the 1871 edition, has been reproduced as an appendix to the CEECT edition. In her first letter to Bentley, 16 Apr. 1852, Susanna reminded him that she had sent "Jeanie Burns" to replace a chapter called "Michael Macbride." In a postscript to this letter, she indicated that "Jeanie Burns" "ought to come in before the account of 'Uncle Joe and his Family',"124 and in her second letter, written on 20 July 1852, that it "should be placed between the VI and VII chapters of the first volume."125 Since "Jeanie Burns" was clearly meant by Susanna to be included in Roughing It in the Bush, it is placed in its intended position in the CEECT edition. The version published in Bentley's Miscellany in August 1852 is the copytext. A problem as to the date on which the Anne sailed upstream from Grosse Isle to Quebec in both the Bentley edition and the 1871 edition has been dealt with in the CEECT edition. In "Quebec," the first impression gives "the 22nd of September" (1852a, Vol. I, p. 16) as the date, and this remained unchanged in the text until the 1871 edition when "the 5th of September" (1871, p. [41]) was used instead. Elsewhere in the first impression information about dates is provided that conflicts with both 22 September and 5 September as the day the Anne went to Quebec. In "Our First Settlement, and the Borrowing System" Susanna notes that on 22 September the Moodies left the Steam-boat Hotel in Cobourg on their journey to their new home in Hamilton Township, and in "Tom Wilson's Emigration" she writes that the Anne arrived at Quebec on 2 September, the date that also appears in the version of "Quebec" published as "Scenes In Canada. No. II" in the Victoria Magazine in November 1847. The 22 September date in "Quebec," therefore, is changed to 2 September (CEECT, p. 27) in order to render it consistent both with "Tom Wilson's Emigration" and the date in the original sketch. A few other emendations in Susanna's material have to do with quotation marks and spelling. For example, in "Our

1

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Logging-Bee," the spelling of "Wittalls" (1852a, Vol. II, p. 74) has been changed to "Wittals" (CEECT, p. 339) to make it consistent with Susanna's other references to this character. In Dunbar's "Canadian Sketches," where the copy-text reads "While America presents the most forbidden aspect to the new settler" (1852b, Vol. II, p. 300), "forbidding" (CEECT, p. 521) has been substituted as the probably intended word. In addition to these changes, all of which are listed in "Emendations in Copy-text" in the concluding apparatus, the following alterations have been made silently. Periods after titles of poems and chapter headings have been dropped. Although the original division of the book into two volumes is observed as two parts, the chapters have been numbered consecutively through the text, and the Roman numerals have been converted to Arabic. In the preparation of this scholarly edition, the periodical material that was eventually incorporated into Roughing It in the Bush was studied, and a bibliographical analysis of each edition was undertaken. As many copies as possible of each version of the text were examined.126 Five copies of the first impression of the first Bentley edition and six copies of its second impression — three of its first, 1852 issue and three of its second, 1854 issue — were microfilmed, as were four copies of the second Bentley edition and four copies of the first Canadian edition. Photocopies made from these microfilms, along with actual copies of these and other versions, were used at all stages in the establishment and verification of the text of the CEECT edition. Several — and various kinds of— collations were carried out in order to establish the history of the text. Oral collations using one person for each version of the text being compared were done on all the periodical material; two copies of each of the prose pieces in the Literary Garland, the Victoria Magazine, and Bentley's Miscellany were also compared in a two-person oral collation to make sure that the copies were identical. Oral collations also helped to determine the relationships among the three issues of the first edition, its relationship to subsequent editions, and their relationship to each other. These oral collations were supplemented

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by detailed visual comparisons, light-table collations, and computer collations. Four copies of the 1871 edition, for example, were collated on a light-table by two CEECT staff members, each working independently. The most collations were performed on the first impression of the first edition. Five photocopies of this impression were first collated on a light-table by two members of staff, each working independently. When this collation revealed variants on each sheet of the impression and a tendency for corrected and uncorrected sheets to be bound together in one copy, several more copies of the first impression were examined visually, and a copy of both states of each sheet was entered on a computer and compared by means of a computer collation. A copy that included each variant selected by the editor as being closest to what Susanna actually intended was then created. The record of these accepted variants is included in "Variants in Copy-text." This text was compared by means of two computer collations with the periodical material, the second impression of the first edition, and the first Canadian edition, each of which had also been entered on the computer. The collation that included the periodical material was particularly complex because, especially in the case of the poetry that became part of Roughing It in the Bush, there were often several authoritative versions of the same poem published in periodicals in the 1830s and 1840s. This collation, however, made clear just how much Susanna had revised and reconceived her periodical material when she prepared Roughing It in the Bush. The second collation, thus, omitted the earlier versions of the material and compared the copy created by the editor with the second impression of the first edition and the first Canadian edition only. The text was then emended from the data provided by this collation. A record of the differences that affect meaning among these three versions is included in the "Historical Collation" in the concluding apparatus. The results of all the numerous collations performed on the various versions of Roughing It in the Bush are available at the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts.

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Because of the way in which the first impression of the first edition was printed and bound, no extant copy conforms exactly to the copy created by the CEECT editor when he chose the variants in the first impression to incorporate into the CEECT edition. Two copies of the first impression of the first edition, however, both held by CEECT, contain between them most of the variants. Both copies were entered on the computer twice, each time by a different typist. The versions of each copy were then proofed by means of a computer program designed to compare one typist's text with the other. When the program revealed differences between the two typists' versions, they were corrected to make them conform with each other and with the actual copy held by CEECT. The copy of the first impression that contained the most uncorrected sheets was used as the base text and the necessary emendations were incorporated into it from the copy that contained the most corrected sheets. "Jeanie Burns" was entered on the computer from a copy made from the microfilm of Bentley's Miscellany held by Carleton University; "Canadian Sketches," from two copies of the second impression of the first Bentley edition, one held by CEECT, the other by the Peterborough Public Library (OPETP 87643917.13 M77). In addition to being proofread by means of computer programs, the text of the CEECT edition was proofread orally at various stages of its preparation. Before the magnetic tape of the CEECT edition was sent to the printer, its contents were also proofread orally, and the CEECT text of Roughing It in the Bush compared to its copy-text so that all the emendations made to this text could be verified. The CEECT text was given oral proofreadings at each stage of its progress from magnetic tape to blues.

ENDNOTES TO INTRODUCTION

1 Susanna, the sixth and youngest daughter of Thomas Strickland and Elizabeth Homer Strickland, was born on 6 Dec. 1803 near Bungay, Suffolk, and baptized in St. Mary's Church, Bungay, on 12 December. She was the first of the Strickland children to be born in Suffolk, the

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family having moved there from the London area in 1803. See DCB, Vol. 11, pp. 857-61. 2 Thomas Pringle had helped to found Blackwood's Magazine in 1817 and was associated with other Scottish publications before emigrating to South Africa where he fell into disfavour with government authorities because of his opposition to slavery. After his return to Britain in 1826 he continued to oppose slavery, and in 1827 assumed his secretarial office, a position he held until his death in 1834. During this period he served in editorial capacities for various publications; it was as editor of Friendship's Offering that he first became acquainted with Susanna Strickland. See DNB. 3 OONL, PHEC, Series I, Correspondence, No. 66, ALS, Dunbar to Susanna, 24 Jan. 1839. Dunbar is reporting to Susanna that his brother Donald "has succeeded in selling Groote Valley for. . . about £450 Halifax Currency payable in instalments bearing interest, but he has no security except on the place itself." He adds, "If we could get this it would be a ... mercy." It is unclear whether the Moodies ever received this money; certainly they do not seem to have got it before they left Douro in 1840. In this, and in all other quotations included in this introduction, the grammar, punctuation, and spelling of the original have been retained, except in a few cases where the style of the passage makes its sense difficult to comprehend. In these instances the missing letter or word is supplied in a square bracket. 4 On 3 Aug. 1830 Susanna wrote to her friend James Bird, "Moodie's Uncle is delighted with his nephew's intended marriage and wishes to see me"; on 12 Aug. 1830 she told Mary Russell Mitford, "it is very likely I shall bid adieu to my native land in the course of a few months forever." See Letters, pp. 49-50. 5 Susanna to James Bird, 19 Oct. 1830, in Letters, p. 53. 6 Letters, p. 55. 7 Susanna stayed first with the Pringles in "Claremont Square Pentonville" and then took a room of her own not far from them in "Middleton Square Pentonville." During her stay in London she formed part of Pringle's literary circle and, indeed, helped him in his anti-slavery work by writing the narratives of former West Indian slaves. At least two of these pieces have survived: The History Of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave. Related By Herself (1831) and Negro Slavery Described By A Negro: Being The Narrative OfAshton Warner, A Native Of St. Vincent's (1831). See Letters, pp. 54-55. 8 Roughing It in the Bush; Or, Life in Canada, ed. Carl Ballstadt (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), p. 233. All subsequent references to this edition are included in the text as (CEECT, p. 000). 9 As well as being reluctant to emigrate, Susanna was not certain what direction she wished her life to take in England. Doubtful that she wanted fame, in 1829 she indicated in a poem addressed to "Miss Mary Russell Mitford" that "Fame is a dream!" and that "That world I once admired I now would flee, / And to win heaven would court obscurity."

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On 4 Apr. 1830 she confirmed her suspicion of fame by becoming a convert to dissent in a Congregationalist Chapel in Wrentham, a village not far from Reydon Hall. Her meeting with Dunbar a short while later altered the direction of her life again. See Letters, pp. 33-34 and 43-48. 10 Susanna to Mary Russell Mitford, n.d., in Letters, p. 42. 11 Susanna to James Bird, 31 Aug. 1831, in Letters, p. 62. 12 The land, in Fenelon, Verulam, and Douro Townships, was acquired under a General Order from the Horse Guards dated 1 Aug. 1831. See NA, Executive Council Records, RG 1, L 3, Upper Canada Land Petitions, "M" Bundle 19, 1828-1835, Vol. 360, No. 33 (NA Microfilm ReelC-2215). 13 Susanna to Emma Bird, 9 Mar. 1832, in Letters, p. 67. 14 For a description of this part of the voyage, see Flora Lyndsay; Or, Passages In An Eventful Life (1854). 15 See, for example, her account of her London acquaintances in a letter written in late January 1831 to James and Emma Bird (Letters, pp. 55-58). 16 "Uncertainty," for example, appeared in the CobourgStar on 31 Oct. 1832, and "Youth and Age," on 19 Dec. 1832. In fact some of Susanna's poems, perhaps submitted by Samuel Strickland, had appeared in the Star a year earlier. 17 Some of Susanna's best-known poems about her Canadian experiences first appeared in the Albion. These included "The Sleigh-Bells. A Canadian Song," which appeared on 2 Mar. 1833, and "The Canadian Herd-Boy," which appeared on 28 June 1834. 18 For example, the Canadian Literary Magazine, published in York (Toronto), included "Achbor: An Oriental Tale" and "Oh Can You Leave Your Native Land" in its first number issued in April 1833. 19 Susanna's poems appeared in the North American Quarterly Magazine from December 1834 until November 1836; in July 1836 Fairfield also published a poem by Dunbar. See Letters, pp. 75-76 and 92-93. 20 See, for example, "There's Rest," Lady's Magazine, Improved Series and Enlarged, 4 (1834), 71, and "The Emigrant's Bride. A Canadian Song," 10 (1837), 53-54. 21 Three of these poems were included in Roughing It in the Bush: "Canadians Will You Join The Band" as "An Address To The Freemen Of Canada," "The Oath Of The Canadian Volunteers," and "The Burning Of The Caroline." A portion of "On Reading the Proclamation Delivered by William Lyon Mackenzie, on Navy Island" was used as the epigraph to "The Outbreak." See Carl Ballstadt, "Secure in Conscious Worth: Susanna Moodie and the Rebellion of 1837," Canadian Poetry, No. 18 (1986), pp. 88-98. 22 For a list of Susanna's contributions to the Garland, see Mary Markham Brown, An Index To The Literary Garland (Montreal 1838-1851) (Toronto: Bibliographical Society of Canada/La Societe Bibliographique du Canada, 1962), pp. 26-29. 23 These are, in chronological order according to the earliest extant

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periodical appearance, "The Sleigh-Bells. A Canadian Song" (Albion, 2 Mar. 1833, p. 72); "Song. The Strains we hear in Foreign Lands" (Albion, 2 Mar. 1833, p. 72); "The Convict's Wife: — A Sketch" (Canadian Literary Magazine, 1 (1833), 44); "Oh Can You Leave Your Native Land. A Canadian Song" (Canadian Literary Magazine, 1 (1833), 56); "There's Rest" (Albion, 25 May 1833, p. 161); "The Canadian Woodsman" (Kingston Spectator, 10 July 1834, p. 1); "Oh! Canada, Thy Gloomy Woods!" (North American Quarterly Magazine, 8 (1836), 198); "Home Thoughts Of An Emigrant" (North American Quarterly Magazine, 8 (1836), 366); "Canadians will You join the Band. A Loyal Song" (Palladium Of British America (Toronto), 20 Dec. 1837, p. [4]); "The Otonabee" (Literary Garland, 1 (1839), 275); "The Oath Of The Canadian Volunteers. A Loyal Song For Canada" (Literary Garland, 1 (1839), 281); "The Waters" (Bytown Gazette, 11 Sept. 1839, p. 1). 24 The "Canadian Sketches" were, in order of appearance, "Old Woodruff And His Three Wives," "The Walk To Dummer," "Our Borrowing," "Tom Wilson's Emigration," "Uncle Joe And His Family," and "Brian, The Still Hunter." "Scenes In Canada" consisted of "A Visit To Grosse Isle" and "First Impressions. Quebec." 25 For evidence of Susanna's admiration of Miss Mitford's work, see Letters, pp. 33-34 and 37-40. 26 La Belle Assemblee, Series 3, Vol. 7 (1828), 51 -55. 27 Literary Garland, 4 (1841 -42), [13]. 28 Ibid. 29 Literary Garland, NS 5 (1847), [ 101 ]. 30 Ibid., 204. 31 Life In The Clearings (London: Richard Bentley, 1853), p. xi. 32 Susanna refers to "the Backwoods of Canada" in the introduction to Roughing It in the Bush (CEECT, p. 4) and echoes her sister's phrase throughout the work; in doing this, Susanna was most probably conscious of the parallels between her work and that of her sister, many of them emanating from their living in the same neighbourhood, knowing the same people, and enduring the same settlement processes. A chapter from A New Home — Who'll Follow* appeared in the Kingston Chronicle & Gazette on 26 Oct. 1839, but there is no way of knowing whether or not Susanna knew of the work. Even if she did not, however, both she and Mrs. Kirkland used Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village as a model. S3 Literary Garland, NS 5 (1847), [ 101 ]. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 104. 36 Ibid., 462. 37 These were "Our Journey Up The Country," "The Charivari," and "Michael Macbride," which was later withdrawn from the work at Susanna's request. 38 "The Walk To Dummer" and "Adieu To The Woods" were the only chapters by Susanna that were revisions of previously published material.

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INTRODUCTION

39 OONL, PHEC, Series I, Correspondence, No. 59a, ALS, Dunbar to Susanna, 24 May 1832. 40 BL, BA, Letterbooks, Vol. 81, No. 135, Bentley to Dunbar, 21 Apr. 1835 (Reel 39). The reel numbers in this and other entries relevant to the Bentley Archives refer to the microfilm publication The archives of Richard Bentley & Son 1829-1898 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1976). 41 In her chapter "The Whirlwind" Susanna also included a poem and a "graphic description of a whirlwind which passed through the town of Guelph in the summer of 1829," both written by her brother Samuel Strickland. See CEECT, pp. 453 and 457-59. 42 For Bruce, see DNB and Letters, p. 104. 43 Susanna to Richard Bentley, 16 Apr. 1852, in Letters, p. 124. 44 BL, BA, Letterbooks, Vol. 82, No. 344, ALS, Bentley to Bruce, 26 Dec. 1851 (Reel 40). 45 IU, BA, Correspondence Br-By, ALS, Bruce to Bentley, 27 Dec. 1851 (Reel 23). 46 BL, BA, Letterbooks, Vol. 82, No. 189, ALS, Bentley to Bruce, 27 Dec. 1851 (Reel 40). 47 IU, BA, Correspondence Br-By, ALS, Bruce to Bentley, 29 Dec. 1851 (Reel 23). 48 BL, BA, Agreement Memorandum Books, Vol. 57, Nos. 81-82 (Reel 29). 49 BL, BA, Agreement and Publication Register, Vol. 69, No. 157 (Reel 35). 50 BL, BA, Agreement Memorandum Books, Vol. 57, No. 83 (Reel 29). 51 BL, BA, Copyright Book, Vol. 117B, p. 11 (Reel 54). 52 BL, BA, Agreement and Publication Register, Vol. 69, No. 221 (Reel 35). 53 Letters, p. 126. 54 IU, BA, Correspondence Br-By, ALS, Bruce to Bentley, 27 Dec. 1851 (Reel 23). 55 IU, BA, Correspondence Br-By, ALS, Bruce to Bentley, 29 Dec. 1851 (Reel 23). 56 "MR. BENTLEY'S LIST For 1852," Supplement to the Spectator (London). 3 Jan. 1852, p. 1. See also "MR. BENTLEY WILL PUBLISH IN JANUARY THE FOLLOWING NEW WORKS," Literary Gazette (London), 10 Jan. 1852, p. 48. 57 "Mrs. Moodie's Life in Canada," Spectator, 7 Feb. 1852, pp. 133-34. 58 Literary Gazette, 21 Feb. 1852, pp. 178-81. 59 Observer (London), 15 Feb. 1852, p. 6. 60 Athenaum (London), 28 Feb. 1852, pp. 247-48. 61 Blackwood's Magazine, 71 (March 1852), 355-65. 62 The author is identified in the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), Vol. I, pp. 927-28. 63 C.F.B., "Preface To The American Edition," in Roughing It In The

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Bush; Or, Life In Canada (New York: George P. Putnam, 1852), p. [iii]. 64 Susanna to Richard Bentley, 20 July 1852, in Letters, p. 126. 65 George Putnam to Susanna, as cited in Susanna to Richard Bentley, 20 July 1852,inL