Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts
Le Chien d'or/The Golden Dog
William Kirby's Le Chien d'or / The Golden Dog, a dramatic historical romance that vividly details the intertwined French and English foundations of Canada, is one of the nation's best-known pieces of ...
Backwoods of Canada
Catharine Parr Strickland Traill (1802-1899) emigrated from Great Britain to Upper Canada in 1832 with her husband Thomas Traill, a retired army officer. The Backwoods of Canada (1836), Catharine¹s epistolary ...
Clockmaker
In 1835 Thomas Chandler Haliburton introduced Samuel Slick of Slicksville, Connecticut, into the pages of the Novascotian in order to awaken his fellow citizens to the economic opportunities of their ...
Canadian Brothers or the Prophecy Fulfilled
Major John Richardson (1796-1852) was a prolific and popular Canadian author. The Canadian Brothers, first published in 1840 in Montreal, is set on the northwest frontier during the War of 1812 and features ...
St. Ursula's Convent or the Nun of Canada
In 1824, when the novel was issued in Kingston, Upper Canada, it became not only the first work of fiction written by a native-born Canadian and published in what is now Canada, but also a significant ...
Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters
Originally published in the Acadian Reader, a Halifax newspaper, in the early 1820s, the letters earned for their author the distinction of being called "the founder of genuine Canadian humour" by Northrop ...
Antoinette de Mirecourt or Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing
A moral exemplum about courtship and marriage, this "essentially Canadian" tale, which takes place in the 1760s, reflects its author's profound and sometimes disturbing knowledge of the bicultural and ...
Roughing it in the Bush or Life in Canada
Probably Canada's best known settlement story, this autobiographical account of frontier conditions in the 1830s is a compelling narrative that emphasizes both the tragedies and the triumphs of a sensible ...
Wacousta or, The Prophecy
Set on the northwest frontier during the Pontiac conspiracy of the 1760s, this story of false identity, wasted love, diabolic vengeance and unquenchable hatred articulates themes and mythologies relevant ...
Canadian Crusoes
This absorbing story about three children of Scottish and French origin who become lost on the Rice Lake Plains in the late eighteenth century provides the author with an opportunity to contemplate important ...