Catharine Parr Traill

Catharine Parr Traill (1802-1899), British-born Canadian author, pioneer, and naturalist. She wrote children’s stories and a notable account of Canadian settlement, The Backwoods of Canada (1836).

She was born Catharine Parr Strickland in Kent, England, the fifth of eight children. She spent most of her childhood and adolescence in rural Suffolk. Her father took a keen interest in the education of his children, and as adolescents they composed stories and plays for their own amusement. Her youngest sister later became known, as Susanna Moodie, for her account of Canadian pioneering, Roughing It in the Bush (1852).

In 1818 her father died, which challenged the family both emotionally and financially. Not long afterward, however, a method of easing the family’s finances surfaced when a friend edited one of Catharine’s manuscripts and managed to sell it to a publisher. Historical sources disagree about which manuscript that was, but her early books, all children’s stories, include Disobedience; or, Mind What Mama Says (1819), Reformation; or, The Cousins (1819), Little Downy; or, The History of a Field Mouse (1822), and The Tell Tale (1823). She thus became a published author while still in her mid-teens.

As a result of this success, Catharine and four of her sisters began to write seriously for publication and its promise of money. In 1832 she married Thomas Traill. Almost immediately afterward she and her husband immigrated to Upper Canada (now Ontario). Over the next six decades she lived in various parts of the province, including Lake Katchwanook, Peterborough, and Rice Lake. After the death of her husband in 1859, she settled in Lakefield.

By the time she left for Upper Canada, Traill was well established as a writer of children’s stories and as a contributor to annuals and periodicals. Prior to her emigration, she also published her first title with a Canadian subject, The Young Emigrants; or, Pictures of Life in Canada (1826), a volume inspired in part by the personal letters she had received from emigrants. Traill’s best-known books are The Backwoods of Canada and The Canadian Crusoes (1852). The Backwoods of Canada, written for an adult audience, is an account of her Atlantic journey and eventual settlement in Upper Canada, presented through a series of letters written to family and friends. The Canadian Crusoes, a work for children, recounts the adventures of three children lost in the Canadian backwoods.

Traill’s other Canadian books include The Female Emigrant’s Guide (1854), a manual for women settlers, and Lady Mary and Her Nurse; or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest (1856), Canadian Wild Flowers (1868), and Studies of Plant Life in Canada (1885), all of which reflect her great interest in local botany. A selection of Traill’s Canadian sketches originally published in periodicals was published in Forest and Other Gleanings (1994), and her selected correspondence was collected in I Bless You in My Heart (1996).