Susanna Moodie

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Standard Name: Moodie, Susanna
Birth Name: Susanna Strickland
Married Name: Susanna Moodie
Pseudonym: Z. Z.
SM is best remembered for her first-person narrative of pioneer life in Canada, Roughing It in the Bush, 1852, considered a foundational work of Canadian literature. She was a prolific author who wrote children's stories, sketches, novels, poetry, and other non-fiction. Her work has proved important for two contemporary Canadian writers, Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields .

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Mary Howitt
During the 1850s, following the death of their schoolboy son Claude, MH and her husband experimented with spiritualism. MH received on one occasion a spirit message from Claude.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London, 1992.
148, 210-11
This was the decade when...
Education Carol Shields
Later she took advantage of her position as a faculty wife to enroll for a course in writing for magazines (at her husband's suggestion) at the University of Toronto —which changed the direction of her...
Family and Intimate relationships Agnes Strickland
All but one of AS 's five sisters became writers when they grew up. Elizabeth (1794-1875) became Agnes's collaborator or silent partner. Jane wrote children's stories. Catharine and Susanna both emigrated with their husbands to...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Strickland
ES 's closest relationship in her family was that with her next sister, Agnes (1796-1874), together with whom she built her writing career. (From about mid-century if not earlier, their relationship was regularly disrupted by...
Family and Intimate relationships Catharine Parr Traill
Her sisters included the writers Agnes Strickland , Elizabeth Strickland , and Susanna Moodie . She shared a particularly close bond with Susanna, her fellow emigrant.
Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. Viking, 1999.
5, 212
Friends, Associates Mary Russell Mitford
She knew most of the literary women of her day, including Felicia Hemans (who wrote to ask her for an autograph),
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett, 1882.
1: 173-4
Jane Porter , Amelia Opie (that warm-hearted person),
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870.
2: 213
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Russell Mitford
Our Village is often said to have inaugurated its genre of small-scale, local-colour sketch writing, but (apart from Washington Irving 's Geoffrey Crayon's Sketch Book, 1819) it owes an obvious debt to the work...
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Atwood
Several of these poems, like Death of a Young Son by Drowning, treat actual incidents of Moodie's life while transforming the plaintive tone adopted in Moodie's own narratives into one of tragedy. Atwood's handling...
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Atwood
More than twenty years before this MA had treated the same historical figure in an unpublished play, Grace Marks, which was broadcast on CBC television in January 1974 under the title The Servant Girl...
Leisure and Society Mary Prince
Nothing is known of her non-working life as a free woman except that she attended the wedding of Susanna Strickland on 4 April 1831.
Literary responses Louisa Anne Meredith
This publication, often considered her most significant, positions her as the first permanent Tasmanian woman resident to author a book on the new colony.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research, 1996.
166: 261
The Athenæum review noted that the minute, yet not...
politics Mary Prince
They did this because so long as her owner refused to manumit her, she could not go back to the Caribbean without again becoming subject to his absolute will.
Alexander, Ziggi, Mary Prince, and Ziggi Alexander. “Introduction; Supplement; Appendices”. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, edited by Moira Ferguson, Pandora, 1987, pp. 1-41.
85-8, 89-92
The conclusion of MP
Author summary Catharine Parr Traill
CPT , sister of the writers Elizabeth and Agnes Strickland and Susanna Moodie , is best known for her naturalist writing about nineteenth-century Upper Canada. She was a letter-writer widely respected and eventually rewarded for...
Reception Catharine Parr Traill
CPT 's writing is generally regarded as the optimistic counterpoint to her sister Susanna Moodie 's gloomy take on Canadian pioneer life.
Residence Catharine Parr Traill
CPT and her husband left England for Canada just days before Susanna Moodie and her husband also left. They were eager to claim Thomas Traill's military land grant.
Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. Viking, 1999.
47
New, William H., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 99. Gale Research, 1990.
332

Timeline

3 June 1829
Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794 - ­1871) (who, in order to do this, had just dissolved the partnership between himself and his brother Samuel Bentley as printers).
By 2 August 1856
Jane Margaret Strickland published a novel, Adonijah, a tale of the Jewish Dispersion; it was shortly attacked by George Eliot in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists as one of the deplorable types of fiction...

Texts

Moodie, Susanna. Enthusiasm, and Other Poems. Smith, Elder, 1831.
Moodie, Susanna. Flora Lyndsay; or, Passages in an Eventful Life. R. Bentley, 1854.
Moodie, Susanna. Geoffrey Moncton; or, The Faithless Guardian. DeWitt and Davenport, 1855.
Moodie, Susanna. George Leatrim; or, The Mother’s Test. Hamilton, 1875.
Moodie, Susanna. Life in the Clearings versus the Bush. R. Bentley, 1853.
Moodie, Susanna. Mark Hurdlestone, the Gold Worshipper. R. Bentley, 1853.
Moodie, Susanna. Matrimonial Speculations. R. Bentley, 1854.
Warner, Ashton, and Susanna Moodie. Negro Slavery Described by a Negro. Samuel Maunder, 1831.
Moodie, Susanna, Agnes Strickland, and J. Green. Patriotic Songs. J. Green, 1830.
Moodie, Susanna, Agnes Strickland, and J. Green. Patriotic Songs, 1830. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/moodie-traill/027013-5007-e.html, http://www.collectionscanada.ca/moodie-traill/027013-5007-e.html.
Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush. R. Bentley, 1852.
Moodie, Susanna, and Susan Glickman. Roughing It in the Bush. McClelland and Stewart, 1989.
Moodie, Susanna. Spartacus. A. K. Newman, 1822.
Prince, Mary, and Susanna Moodie. The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. Editor Pringle, Thomas, F. Westley and A.H. Davis; Waugh and Innes, 1831.
Moodie, Susanna, and Elizabeth Strickland. The Little Prisoner; or, Passion and Patience; and, Amendment; or, Charles Grant and his Sister. Dean and Munday, 1828.
Moodie, Susanna. The World Before Them. R. Bentley, 1867.