Audiobook · read by volunteers
Roughing It in the Bush
Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
Read by Moira Fogarty · 34 chapters · 18 h 48
About the book
When Susanna Moodie and her husband left England for the Canadian backwoods, they had been promised a comfortable new life. What they found was a log cabin, a brutal winter, a struggle with land that refused to be tamed, and a cast of neighbours from the humble to the outrageous. Her account of their years in Upper Canada is frank, funny and often startlingly vivid. She writes of fevers, fires, borrowed tools, strange visitors and the sheer effort of making a home from nothing, and she does not hide her frustration with the glowing lies of the land agents who had lured settlers overseas. Her sister Catharine Parr Traill, who also settled in the backwoods, wrote a celebrated account of pioneer life of her own. Nearly nineteen hours of firsthand pioneer history, read by a single voice, make this a rich and lively listen.
Introduction
Roughing It in the Bush is Susanna Moodie’s account of how she coped with the harshness of life in the woods of Upper Canada, as an Englishwoman homesteading abroad. Moodie, who lived from 1803 to 1885, published the book in 1852. Her narrative was constructed partly as a response to the glowing falsehoods that European land agents were circulating about life in the New World, and it was designed to warn prospective emigrants of the difficulties they would face.
The chronicle is frank and humorous, and it was a popular sensation at the time of its publication. It begins with an introduction to the third edition and moves through the voyage and the first sight of the new country, with chapters such as A Visit to Grosse Isle and Quebec. It then follows the family’s journey up the country and their early settlement, with its borrowing system and its frictions with neighbours. Along the way she introduces a gallery of memorable people, among them Tom Wilson and the family of Uncle Joe.
Moodie writes with an educated woman’s eye for detail and for character, and her tone ranges from irritated to affectionate. The book has become a classic of Canadian writing and a valuable record of pioneer life, though some of her attitudes belong firmly to her own time.
The recording is divided into 34 chapters and lasts about eighteen and three-quarter hours. One LibriVox volunteer reads it from start to finish. It is a long but absorbing listen, ideal for a winter, a long trip or anyone with a curiosity about how people actually lived when a country was being settled.
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