Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [173]
To round out the picture of Suffolk in the early nineteenth century, I turned to Suffolk Scene by Julian Tennyson (1939); Rachel Lawrence’s Southwold River, Georgian Life in the Blyth Valley (1990); and A History of Suffolk by David Dymond and Peter Northeast Phillimore (1995). The comparison with the Austen family came to mind after I read Jane Austen, A Life by Claire Tomalin (1997).
I learned about the position of women in Regency England in Muriel Jaeger’s Before Victoria, Changing Standards of Behaviour 1787‒1837 (1967) and in Hyenas in Petticoats by Robert Woof, Stephen Hebron and Claire Tomalin (1997). Another book that provided useful background for lives of women during this period was A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets by Kathleen Jones (1998). I learned about London in the late 1820s from James Morris’s Heaven’s Command, An Imperial Progress (1973). Information about Mary Prince and Ashton Warner comes from Dr. Sandy Campbell, of the English Department at the University of Ottawa.
CHAPTER 4
I learned about Leith during a personal visit, and from Hamish Coghill’s Discovering the Water of Leith (1988). I never found a good modern account of Atlantic crossings in the 1830s, but I did discover Edwin C. Guillet, a prolific historian who wrote on a wide variety of topics I wanted to know about. His book The Great Migration, The Atlantic Crossing by Sailing-Ship 1770-1860 (1963) and his pamphlet Cobourg 1798-1948, written for the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Cobourg (1948), were both useful sources. Dr. Bruce Elliot of Carleton University and Caroline Parry (author of Eleanor’s Diary) both shared their knowledge of the emigrant ships with me.
CHAPTERS 5, 6 AND 7
I was able to imagine Cobourg in 1832 thanks to Katherine Ashenburg’s Going to Town, Architectural Walking Tours in Southern Ontario (1996) and a wonderful little memoir of “the early days” written by a longtime resident, Mrs. David Fleming, and published by the Oshawa and District Historical Society (1960). I got a sense of what Upper Canada looked like, and how newly arrived travellers responded to it, from Early Travellers in the Canadas, 1791-1867, edited by Gerald M. Craig (1955), and from three first-hand accounts: Our Forest Home, Being extracts from the correspondence of the late Frances Stewart edited by her daughter E.S. Dunlop (1902); A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, The Journals of Anne Langton edited by H.H. Langton (1950), and from John Langton’s Early Days in Upper Canada (1926).
Gentlemen Emigrants by Patrick Dunae (1981) explained what ill-suited pioneers the Traills and Moodies were. John Thurston’s The Work of Words, The Writing of Susanna Strickland Moodie (1996) dealt with Susanna’s shock at her first taste of the New World. Carole Gerson explored the two women’s attitudes to native peoples, and pointed out how sympathetic they were, in her article “Nobler Savages: Representations of Native Women in the Writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill” ( Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1997, Vol. 32,No. 2). Joan Holmes explained to me who the “Chippewa Indians” were.
CHAPTERS 8 AND 9
William Kilbourn gave us the best biography of William Lyon Mackenzie, and the liveliest account of the 1837 Uprising, in The Firebrand (1956). Donald Creighton provided more general accounts of the history of this period in The Story of Canada (1959) and in his magnificent biography John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician, The Old Chieftain (reprinted in one volume, 1998).
CHAPTER 10
I spent happy hours in Belleville Public Library’s Canadiana Room, looking through old almanacs, county atlases and local histories for details of life in nineteenth-century Belleville. Information on George Benjamin came from Sheldon and Judith Godfrey’s lively and