Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Faye Hammill (University of Glasgow)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1970

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Atwood\'s third major volume of verse, was inspired by the writing of Susanna Strickland Moodie (1803-1885), an English emigrant to Upper Canada. These are among Atwood\'s best-known poems, and they have exerted a very significant influence on later Canadian literature and literary criticism.

The book comprises a sequence of eighteen poems, divided into three Journals, together with a prose Afterword. They are loosely based on the sequence of events described in Susanna Moodie\'s autobiographical books Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). Atwood\'s first Journal depicts Moodie\'s 1832 journey across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence, her …

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965 words

Citation: Hammill, Faye. "The Journals of Susanna Moodie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=466, accessed 28 November 2024.]

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