Chewed Covers

I find that Winter Studies and Summer Rambles (1838) by Anna Jameson is my least favourite of the three "ladies in the wilderness" books which found the Canadian canon. While one can't help but admire Jameson's bravery in her travels through southwestern Ontario in the 1830s, and her fairly sensitive discussion of the Natives she encounters (particularly the Ojibway/ Chippewa), the book as a whole lacks the irony and subtlety of Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush (1852) or the cheerful optimism and joyful recording of the flora of Ontario and its settlers found Catharine Parr Traill's Backwoods of Canada (1836). Rather, one quickly tires of Jameson's lecturing on Goethe, German Romanticism, and her constant return to the importance of temperance/ prohibition.

Our six-month-old puppy would, I believe, concur with this opinion as evidenced by her recent review of the book:

Photo by Sharon Harris