Winding Trail Press - Catherine Parr Traill

About Catherine Parr Traill

Catharine Parr (Strickland) Traill was a settler, author, teacher, and naturalist and is considered one of the founding mothers of English Canadian literature. Traill was born on January 9th, 1802, in England and died on August 29th, 1899, at Lakefield, Ontario. Her life embraced nearly the entire 19th century and she spent nearly 70 of those years in Canada.

Her first book was published when she was 15 and her last when she was 93. At one point she was the oldest living author in the British Empire. Her books written in England include:

• The tell tale: an original collection of moral and amusing stories (1818)
• Disobedience; or, mind what Mama says (1819)
• Little Downy; or, the history of a field mouse: a moral tale (1822)
• The keepsake guineas; or, the best use of money (1828)
• Sketch book of a young naturalist; or, hints to the students of nature (1831)
• The young emigrants; or, pictures of Canada; calculated to amuse and instruct the minds of youth (1826)

In 1832 she met Lieutenant Thomas Traill, a widowed Scot and pensioned officer. Despite considerable family opposition they married on May 13th, 1832, and emigrated to Canada soon afterwards. The pioneer life was not kind to the Traills and they were always poor. To earn money for the family, Catharine turned again to writing. Her Canadian books include:

• The backwoods of Canada: being letters from the wife of an emigrant officer, illustrative of the domestic economy of British America (1836)
• Canadian Crusoes: a tale of the Rice Lake plains (1852)
• Lady Mary and her nurse; or, a peep into the Canadian forest (1856)
• The Canadian Settler's Guide (1855)
• Canadian wildflowers, with Agnes FitzGibbon (1968)
• Studies of plant life in Canada; or, gleanings from forest, lake and plain (1885)
• Pearls and pebbles; or, notes of an old naturalist (1894)
• Cot and cradle stories (1895)

Summarized from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry by Michael Peterman.