Catharine Parr Traill
Traill, Catharine Parr
Catharine Parr Traill, née Strickland, pioneer writer, botanist (b at London, Eng 9 Jan 1802; d at Lakefield, Ont 29 Aug 1899). In 1832 Traill immigrated to Canada with her husband, half-pay Lieutenant Thomas Traill, and settled on the Otonabee River near Peterborough, next door to her sister Susanna MOODIE. There Traill wrote her most famous book, The Backwoods of Canada (1836), a factual and scientific account of her first 3 years in the bush, a pragmatic and optimistic work stressing the kind of realistic detail that has become a tradition in Canadian literature in such writers as Farley MOWAT and Pierre BERTON. Her published works include juvenile fiction, a housekeeping manual, The Female Emigrant's Guide (1854), and treatises on Canadian botany, Canadian Wildflowers (1868) and Studies of Plant Life in Canada (1885).
Traill, Catharine Parr
The realistic detail found in the late-19th century writing of Catharine Parr-Traill has become a tradition in Canadian literature (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-067337).
Author MARIAN FOWLER
Suggested Reading
Marian Fowler, The Embroidered Tent (1982).
Links to Other Sites
Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill
This Library and Archives Canada website is dedicated to these two prominent Canadian 19th-century writers. Includes some of their literary works.
The Dominion government's advertisement asked for volunteers "able to read and write either the English or French language" with "good antecedents" who were good horsemen...
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