| Irish immigrant Frances Stewart reveals her life through half a century of letters that she wrote home to Ireland after arriving in Upper Canada in 1822. Original, excerpted, and copied variants of the letters are found in archival collections, while heavily edited published versions occur in Our Forest Home: Being Extracts from the Correspondence of the late Frances Stewart, compiled by Frances's daughter, Ellen Dunlop in two variant editions (1889, 1902).;By focusing on aspects of class, gender, and ethnicity, and known factors about the lived experiences of Frances and Ellen, this thesis discusses the manner in which Ellen re-describes her mother for publication. Textual analysis is used as an investigative tool for extracting meaning from the layers of text, and allows for credible postulations about the editing decisions that Ellen made. Concluding remarks include a discussion of the impact of Our Forest Home on later publications about Peterborough's history and Upper Canadian immigrant women.;Keywords. Frances Stewart, Thomas Alexander Stewart, Our Forest Home: Being Extracts from the Correspondence of the late Frances Stewart, Eleanor Susannah Dunlop, Peterborough, Ontario, Textual Analysis, Catharine Parr Traill, Nineteenth-Century Canadian Immigrant Letters. |
