Audiobook · read by volunteers
Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush
Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
Read by Cori Samuel, Esther, Jim Mowatt, Glen Hallstrom · 20 chapters · 11 h 20
About the book
When Susanna Moodie left the backwoods of Canada for the town of Belleville, she called the change a move from the bush to the clearings. Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush is her portrait of that new world, with its schools, churches, local improvements, social gatherings and political quarrels. Moodie writes as a keen observer and an educated English gentlewoman, and she is never afraid to give her opinion on matters of religion, art or education. She also speaks about the tensions of the time, when reformers and conservatives pulled the colony in different directions, and her husband’s position as sheriff placed the family in the middle of it all. Twenty chapters and over eleven hours, shared among four readers, give a vivid account of nineteenth century Ontario. A fine companion for anyone interested in Canadian history.
Introduction
Susanna Moodie, who lived from 1803 to 1885, was an English-born writer who emigrated to Upper Canada in the 1830s and became one of the country’s best-known early authors. Her first book about her experiences, Roughing It in the Bush, is the more famous. Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush, published in 1853, is its companion volume and describes the later stage of her life, after the family moved to Belleville in 1840.
As a middle class Englishwoman, Moodie did not particularly enjoy the bush, as she called it, and she refers to her new home as the clearings. In this book she describes urban life, including religion, art and education, and compares what she found in town with the relative lack of these things in the bush. She also studied the Family Compact, the ruling group in the colony, and became sympathetic to the moderate reformers led by Robert Baldwin, while remaining critical of radical reformers such as William Lyon Mackenzie. This caused problems for her husband, who shared her views but, as sheriff of Belleville, had to work with supporters of the Family Compact.
The book is therefore both a travel account and a social document, and it offers a lively picture of mid nineteenth century Canada. The voice is personal, opinionated and sometimes sharp.
The LibriVox recording has twenty chapters and lasts about eleven hours. It is read by four volunteers, among them Cori Samuel, Esther and Jim Mowatt. It is also a firsthand account of daily life in a small Ontario town of the period, which gives it real value for readers of history.
Public domain
Susanna Moodie died in 1885: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text