I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill ed. by Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael A. Peterman (review)

HUMANITIES 251 silent reacling/ the printed text allows for two or even several possibilities at once, so that the dramatic character can 'speak with two minds upon a subject.' Syntax, punctuation, and lineation are, as Shaw's analyses show, other matters that can appeal to the eye in ways different from their appeal to the ear. Finally, there is the all-important ability of a reader to glance backward or look forward on a printed page, an easier task than a listener's having to remember words and phrases that disappear the moment they are spoken. The 'reinvented poem' (the term is Helen Vendler's) allows errors in judgment to stand and 'contradictoryimpressions to remain,' and our ability to move around within such a printed text makes possible our reinvented reading of an inner drama which a stage play can only treat more obliquely. Shaw, one hopes, will develop all of these topics into a full theory of the dramatic monologue. If this book is any indication, that result is well worth waiting for. (DONALD S. HAIR) Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins and Michael A. Petennan, editors. 1Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence ofCatharine Parr Traill University of Toronto Press. xxii, 438. $39.95 Catharine Parr Strickland Traill's life and literary career span most of the nineteenth century, and encompass much of Canada's culturalrustory. Born in England in the county of Kent in 1802, she published her first book in London in 1818 and emigrated to Upper Canada in 1832, where she published her last book in 1895, four years before her death in 1899. Today, she and her sister, Susanna Strickland Moodie~ are best known for their contrasting pioneer narratives: Traill,s The Backwoods ofCanada (1836) often serves as a foil for Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush (1852) as critics contrast a placid, sunny Catharine with an opinionated, contradictory Susanna, usually allowingSusanna'sself-dramatizingpersona to override thatofher more self-effacing sister. Now that the editorial team that has already produced two fine volumes ofMoodie's letters has issued this selection of Traill's correspondence,it is possible to see the extent to which the narrator of Catharine's publications is a constructed persona,shaped to fit the mode ofpublic discourse expected of a Victorian gentlewoman. In preparing this volume, the editors located nearly 500 letters (from which they have selected 136) spanningseven decades (1827-99): ample testimony to the role of letter-writingas a primary medium ofsocialcommunicationinVictorian Canada, especially for a busy wife, mother (of rune), and author who enjoyed little domestic assistance and scant leisure time. Both the selected letters and the editorial commentary highlight Traill's career as an author, providing details of the difficulties attending composition , publication (book and periodical), and distribution in nineteenthcentury rural Canada. Many of her schemes came to naught; other projects 252 LEITERS IN CANADA 1996 broughtherfar lessremWleration than she should have received. Thebroad historical sweep of the book should attract a wide readership: letters from the early years, before and shortly after her emigration, relate to the production of middle-class literature for women and children (including annuals and periodicals) in England. The letters from her most difficult period in Canada, the 18405 and 1850S, provide an inside view of backwoods hardship along with the network of support created by Traill and her closest women friends and confidantes ...,. SusaIU\a Moodie, Frances Stewart, and Stewart's daughter, Ellen Dunlop - as they shared the distresses of maternal anxiety, illness, and poverty. The later letters provide a continuing community narrative as Traill assumed the role of matriarchal chronicler, regularly updating her extended family - especially her son William, whose career with the Hudson's Bay Company kept him in the Northwest, and her sister in England, Sarah Gwillym, whose annual monetary gifts were always welcome - on the health and activities of their ever-expandmg circle ofrelatives and friends. Throughout the volume, the editors' detailed notes represent commendably thorough research into the social history and development of the PeterboroughiRice Lake area where Traill spent most of her Canadian years. It is always a little disconcerting to read published editions of private correspondence, especially from an era when rigorous distinctions were maintainedbetween...