Author Letters

Sorry I haven't added anything to this site this week - I think I'm just too swamped in Canadian fiction to write about Canadian fiction right now!

I'm working on an essay (that has to be done by Monday) about Catharine Parr Traill and her children.

CPT, as she is commonly called, was born in England but emigrated to Canada with her husband in 1832. She and most of her sisters, some here and some there, was a writer. In addition to the work that she is most known for, The Backwoods of Canada, she wrote many other works both for adults and for children. And she wrote letters. Many, many letters!

Which is great, because I happen to really like reading people's letters....especially authors' letters. It interests me - not so much the descriptions and so on ...and in this case, I could surely do without some of the preachy content ... but often there are very interesting differences in how an author constructs themself in their letters to various people, and also, I have found, in more than a few instances, that often you can see material from the letters that winds up in the fiction.

I am looking forward to reading some of CPTs later works to see if this holds true in hers as well as it did when I was studying Margaret Laurence's novels and letters. But first I have to get this paper done. And then the next (viral marketing in publishing) and then the 2 short papers and 20 essays to mark and 100 database marks to calculate and submit and OMG I'm never going to get it all done before the 24th!!! What am I DOING here? I should be working!