Description
One of the best accounts of life as an immigrant in Canada, Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush describes the hardships immigrants to Upper Canada had to endure after they arrived as from Britain in the 1830s. First published in 1852 in London, the book brought the writer instant success, ranking her as one of the best writers of her times.Moodie came to Canada with her husband and daughter in 1832. Immigration to Canada was viewed at the time as an excellent possibility to acquire fortune, but the life she found in her new homeland was far from what she had thought it would be. The Canadian settler’s life proved to be hard: the environment was new and strange, with rules and characters difficult to comprehend for middle-class born Moodie – her account is pragmatic and optimistic, but there is an underlying streak of irony and nostalgia on the pages at all times.Roughing It in the Bush is the second part of a trilogy – the first part describes the preparations for the immigration, while the third book of the series describes what life was like in Canadian towns. The book mixes memoir and fiction in a masterful way. Structured as a series of sketches, the book was actually compiled and developed from Moodie’s Canadian Sketches, but the episodes are assembled into a well-formed, chronologically easy to follow story, written in an engaging style.The book was viewed positively at the time it was first published and it enjoys success in our days as well, and not only among Canadian readers interested in a credible account of life during the first half of the 19th century. The sketches reveal a strong and resilient woman able to endure hardships and poverty that had been previously inconceivable for her, but refuses to give in to despair – a role model for today’s readers, too.
Product ID: 9781775424352
Sku: Q0-1M0L-BHAS
