Sisters in Two Worlds:
A Visual Biography of Susanna Moodie
and Catharine Parr Traill
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by Michael Peterman
Doubleday Canada, Toronto, 2007
176 pp., illus., $45 hardcover
Sisters in Two Worlds follows the remarkable lives of two sisters who literally wrote the book on early Canadian pioneer women’s history. Michael Peterman is Canada’s foremost scholar on Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, and his latest book contains over two hundred images, many never before published.
Their story begins in the genteel English country estate where the sisters were raised and moves to the untamed wilderness of Upper Canada, where they struggled with hard winters, illness, childbirth, backbreaking labour, and the looming threat of poverty. The chronicles of their experiences — Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush and Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada — have become classics of Canadian historical literature.
Peterman weaves in the protagonists’ sometimes rocky relationships with their other sisters back in England — Eliza, Agnes, Jane Margaret, and Sarah. All but Sarah became published writers, with Agnes gaining fame and fortune as a celebrated royal biographer. However, Agnes was furious when Susanna dedicated Roughing it to her — she did not want to be associated with a book about the coarse and common inhabitants of the Canadian backwoods.
This artfully illustrated book is a must for Moodie/Traill enthusiasts.
— Nelle Oosterom (Read bio)
Nelle Oosterom is the Senior Editor of Canada's History magazine.