Susanna Moodie

George Leatrim (Dodo Press) Susanna Moodie

Susanna Moodie, née Strickland (1803-1885) was a British-Canadian author who wrote about her experiences as a settler in Canada. She wrote her first children's book in 1822, and published other children's stories in London, including books about Spartacus and Jugurtha. In London she was also involved in the antislavery movement. She continued to write in Canada and her letters and journals contain valuable information about life in the colony. As a middle class Englishwoman she did not particularly enjoy "the bush", as she called it. She and her husband moved to Belleville in 1840, which she referred to as "the clearings". In 1852, she published Roughing it in the Bush, detailing her experiences on the farm in the 1830s. In 1853, she published Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush, about her time in Belleville. Her other works include Mark Hurdlestone (1853), Flora Lyndsay (1854), Matrimonial Speculations (1854), Geoffrey Moncton (1855), The World Before Them (1868), George Leatrim (1875), Life in the Backwoods (1887).