Susanna Moodie

Susanna Moodie was born in Bungay, on the River Waveney in Suffolk. She was one of the youngest sister in a family of writers, including Agnes Strickland, Jane Margaret Strickland and Catharine Parr Traill. ==Early career==

She wrote her first children's book in 1822 and published other children's stories in London, including books about Spartacus and Jugurtha. In London she was also involved in the abolitionist organization Anti-Slavery Society, transcribing the narrative of the former Caribbean slave Mary Prince. {{cite book ==Marriage and move to Upper Canada==

On 4 April 1831, she married John Moodie, a retired officer who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1832, with her husband, a British Army officer, and daughter, Moodie immigrated to Upper Canada. The family settled on a farm in Douro township, near Lakefield, north of Peterborough, where her brother Samuel Strickland (1804–1867) worked as a surveyor, and where artifacts are housed in a museum. Founded by Samuel, the museum was formerly an Anglican church and overlooks the Otonabee River where Susanna once canoed. It also displays artifacts concerning Samuel, as well as her elder sister and fellow writer Catharine, who married a friend of John Moodie's and immigrated to the same area a few weeks before Susanna and John. Moodie continued to write in Canada, and her letters and journals contain valuable information about life in the colony. She observed life in what was then the backwoods of Ontario, including native customs, the climate, the wildlife, relations between the Canadian population and recent American settlers, and the strong sense of community and the communal work, known as "bees" (which she, incidentally, hated). She suffered through the economic depression in 1836, and her husband served in the militia against William Lyon Mackenzie in the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837. As a middle-class Englishwoman, Moodie did not particularly enjoy "the bush", as she called it. In 1840, she and her husband moved to Belleville, which she referred to as "the clearings." She studied the Family Compact 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 members and supporters of the Family Compact. ==Writing career==

Early writing Susanna Moodie came from a writing family with a prolific output similar to that of the Bronte, Edgeworth, and Trollope families. Several of the sisters made careers as authors, including Agnes Strickland, Elizabeth Strickland, Catharine Parr Traill, and Jane Margaret Strickland. Agnes and Elizabeth became well known for their long series of royal biographies. Abolitionist and humanitarian writing While living in London, Moodie became connected with the Anti-Slavery Society through its secretary, Thomas Pringle. She sent him poems and stories for the annual ''Friendship's Offering, a gift book he edited. They began a correspondence and eventually became friends, visiting his home in Hampstead. It was there that she met formerly enslaved people from the West Indies. She and her sister Agnes published Patriotic Songs in 1830, and in 1831 Moodie published Enthusiasm; and Other Poems'', a 214-page collection containing both previously published and new poems. Her journals and letters added even more material. They recorded what she saw in Douro Township and later in Belleville. These writings grew into her three major nonfiction books. She published Roughing It in the Bush in 1852. She followed it in 1853 with Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush, which focused on her years in Belleville. She also produced Life in the Backwoods, a sequel that extended the story of her time as a new settler. Readers in the 19th century praised Roughing It in the Bush for its sharp portraits of settlers, its descriptions of rural customs and household routines, and its attention to the natural environment. The book has remained important in Canadian literary studies and has been read as history, as early realism, as local-colour writing, and as part of the Romantic tradition. ==Family legacy in illustration==

Moodie taught her daughter Agnes how to paint flowers. Agnes later illustrated Canadian Wild Flowers, published in 1868. == Death ==

She died in Toronto, Ontario on 8 April 1885 and is buried in Belleville Cemetery. == Recognition ==

Moodie's books and poetry inspired Margaret Atwood's collection of poetry, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, published in 1970. It was also an important influence on one of Atwood's later novels, Alias Grace, based on an account of murder convict Grace Marks which appeared in Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush. She has also been a source of inspiration for Carol Shields, who published a critical analysis of Moodie's work, Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision. Additionally, the central character of Shields' novel, Small Ceremonies, is working on a biography of Moodie. Commemorative postage stamp On 8 September 2003, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the National Library of Canada, Canada Post released a special commemorative series, "The Writers of Canada", with a design by Katalina Kovats, featuring two English-Canadian and two French-Canadian stamps. Three million stamps were issued. Moodie and her sister Catherine Parr Traill were featured on one of the English-Canadian stamps. ==Bibliography==