Roughing it in the Bush

Susanna Moodie was born in Bungay near the English city of Ipswich in 1803, but she would make her name some three thousand miles away from her origins — in what was then the crown colony of Upper Canada, in modern-day Ontario. In 1852, Moodie penned Roughing It in the Bush, her account of her life in the colony. The work was received with great interest and significant praise back in the United Kingdom.

The frank, honest tone of Moodie's writing is perhaps the reason for the acclaim she received. Moodie paints a warts-and-all picture of life in Upper Canada, far removed from the airbrushed, chocolate-box utopia presented by some of her peers or the swashbuckling, frontiersman mythology peddled by adventure writers. Moodie would later soften her tone, producing works such as Life in the Clearings, in which she professed her love for the land and countered accusations of anti-Canadian bias.

The direct and unequivocal approach of her debut volume remains startling and refreshingly at odds with the expected output of Moodie's female writer contemporaries.