Catharine Parr Traill

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Standard Name: Traill, Catharine Parr
Birth Name: Catharine Parr Strickland
Married Name: Catharine Parr Traill
CPT , sister of the writers Elizabeth and Agnes Strickland and Susanna Moodie , is best known for her naturalist writing about nineteenth-century Upper Canada. She was a letter-writer widely respected and eventually rewarded for her skills in botany. Commenting on CPT 's outpouring of practical advice to female settlers, contemporary critic Clara Thomas dubs her the Mrs Beeton of nineteenth century Canada.
qtd. in
New, William H., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 99. Gale Research, 1990.
335
Traill also published a number of stories for children; the best of these incorporate her scientific observations. Characteristically, she wrote: Nothing that exists in the animal, vegetable or mineral world is unworthy of our attention.
qtd. in
New, William H., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 99. Gale Research, 1990.
332
Black and white photograph of Catharine Parr Traill, wearing a white cap tied under her chin. Her strong features are clearly visible, but detail around the image is blurry and fades to nothing. Her signature is reproduced below.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Susanna Moodie
SM came from an aspiring middle-class family and was well-educated. Unlike their older siblings, she (with her sister Catharine Parr Traill and another sister close to them in age) had difficulty establishing herself as a...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Strickland
ES 's closest relationship in her family was that with her next sister, Agnes (1796-1874), together with whom she built her writing career. (From about mid-century if not earlier, their relationship was regularly disrupted by...
Family and Intimate relationships Agnes Strickland
All but one of AS 's five sisters became writers when they grew up. Elizabeth (1794-1875) became Agnes's collaborator or silent partner. Jane wrote children's stories. Catharine and Susanna both emigrated with their husbands to...
Family and Intimate relationships Susanna Moodie
Among SM 's five sisters, four became writers: Eliza or Elizabeth Strickland , Agnes Strickland (whose Lives of the Queens of England and other books were co-written with Elizabeth but bore her name alone), Jane Strickland
Family and Intimate relationships Susanna Moodie
A son arrived in August 1834, named for his father but called Dunbar . SM had seven children in eleven years; all were difficult pregnancies and births. One of SM 's midwives (besides her sister
Family and Intimate relationships Susanna Moodie
After his death SM moved in with her youngest son and his wife at Seaforth, Ontario, but later took rooms in various locations around Belleville. Eventually, she accepted her sister'sCatharine Parr Traill invitation to come and...
Literary responses Margaret Laurence
Again one reviewer, this time a woman writing for a Canadian magazine, insisted against Laurence's protests that the novel was entirely autobiographical.
Laurence, Margaret. Dance on the Earth: A Memoir. McClelland and Stewart, 1989.
208
The Feminist Companion called The Divinersa spacious novel which translates experience...
Author summary Agnes Strickland
AS , writing in the middle nineteenth century, won renown as a historian and biographer, particularly of the British royal family and particularly of its female members. In fact all of these books were co-authored...
Publishing Fredrika Bremer
In May 1852 Anna Maria Hall 's journal, Sharpe's London Magazine, carried FB's Impressions of England in 1851 (before her related book appeared, and along with an article by Catharine Parr Traill ).
“Wild Cattle Preserved in Parks.-”. The Times, No. 21098, 24 Apr. 1852, p. 2, https://link-gale-com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/apps/doc/CS33719960/TTDA?u=guel77241&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=2975e4df.
21098 (24 April 1852): 2
Residence Margaret Laurence
Her final home, to which she moved on 1 May 1974, was in Lakefield, Ontario (which as an early settlement had been the home of both Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill ). Here ML
Residence Susanna Moodie
SM and her family relocated to a bush farm north of Peterborough, Ontario, in part to be closer to her sister's and brother's homes.
Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. Viking, 1999.
92, 97
Residence Susanna Moodie
The Moodies bought some cleared farmland near Port Hope but had great difficulty evicting the former owners, the Harris family.
Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. Viking, 1999.
84
SM 's sister Catharine Parr Traill and her husband had passed through the area...
Textual Features George Eliot
The white neck-cloth species, exemplified by Caroline Scott 's The Old Grey Church, is both upper-class and fervently Evangelical in setting: a kind of genteel tract on a large scale, intended as a sort...
Textual Features Susanna Moodie
Roughing It in the Bush is a collection of sketches about a difficult adjustment to pioneer life in Canada, based on real incidents in SM 's life before her move to Belleville and embellished...
Textual Production Susanna Moodie
SM imagined bringing the benefits of literature to an audience of yeomen and mechanics,
qtd. in
Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. Viking, 1999.
198
a demographic that would not compete with the market sought by the Literary Garland, which continued to pay for...

Timeline

By 2 August 1856: Jane Margaret Strickland published a novel,...

Women writers item

By 2 August 1856

Jane Margaret Strickland published a novel, Adonijah, a tale of the Jewish Dispersion; it was shortly attacked by George Eliot in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists as one of the deplorable types of fiction...

Texts

Traill, Catharine Parr, and Agnes Dunbar Moodie Chamberlin. Canadian Wild Flowers. Lovell, 1868.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Cot and Cradle Stories. Editor FitzGibbon, Mary Agnes, Briggs, 1895.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Lady Mary and Her Nurse; or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest. Hall, Virtue, 1856.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Little Downy; or, The History of a Field Mouse. Dean and Munday, 1822.
Traill, Catharine Parr, and Mary Agnes FitzGibbon. Pearls and Pebbles; or, Notes of an Old Naturalist. Briggs, 1894.
Strickland, Agnes et al. Prejudice Reproved; or, The History of the Negro Toy-Seller. Harvey and Darton, 1826.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Prejudice Reproved; or, The History of the Negro Toyseller. Harvey and Darton, 1826.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Reformation; or, The Cousins. Woodhouse, 1819.
Traill, Catharine Parr. Sketchbook of a Young Naturalist; or, Hints to the Students of Nature. 1831.
Traill, Catharine Parr, and Agnes Dunbar Moodie Chamberlin. Studies of Plant Life in Canada; or, Gleanings from Forest, Lake and Plain. Woodburn, 1885.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Backwoods of Canada. Knight, 1836.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains. Editor Strickland, Agnes, Hall, Virtue, 1852.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Female Emigrant’s Guide, and Hints on Canadian Housekeeping. Maclear, 1854, 2 vols.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Keepsake Guineas; or, The Best Use of Money. Newman, 1828.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Tell Tale: An Original Collection of Moral and Amusing Stories. Harris, 1818.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Young Emigrants; or, Pictures of Life in Canada. Harvey and Darton, 1826.