SOURCE: Rukavina, Alison. “‘Of the Irritable Genus’: The Role of Susanna Moodie in the Publishing of Roughing It in the Bush.” Studies in Canadian Literature 25, no. 1 (2000): 37-56.

In the following essay, Rukavina considers the publication history of Roughing It in the Bush, including motive for author and publisher and the process of revision for later editions.

When Roughing It in the Bush was first published in 1852, it was advertised as a “glowing narrative of personal incident and suffering,” which would “no doubt attract general attention” ([Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts; hereafter cited as CEECT] 669).¹ While publisher Richard Bentley's announcement portrayed Susanna Moodie as a strong woman whose “warmth of feeling … beams through every line,” many other versions of the author's relationship to her work have since been constructed. Most recently, in The Work of Words: The Writings of Susanna Strickland Moodie, John Thurston argues that “Moodie is...