The History of Emily Montague

Frances Brooke was an 18th century British novelist, playwright, essayist and translator. Under the pseudonym of Mary Singleton, Spinster, she edited thirty-seven issues of her own weekly periodical, Old Maid (1755-1756). In 1769 she published The History of Emily Montague. Although her time in Canada was brief her novel was considered to be the first novel written in Canada. The History of Emily Montague is a love story set in Quebec City. The early English-speaking inhabitants, the Québécois, and the Native people are all a part of her story. The time is the decade between Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and the American War of Independence in the 1770s. The History of Emily Montague is written as a series of letters. The History of Emily Montague has much to say about the confrontation between the old world and the new, Huron and Iroquois culture; progressive gender roles in the development of a new colony; the innate indolence of Canadians; the weather; and eighteenth-century courtship in a colonial context. In a sense this novel is a travelogue, a history of Emily Montague and her friends, in response to the unseen request by the English woman to describe the colony in detail-with all the information a woman in England would want to know about the landscape, religion, social life, and people of colonial Canada. Through the different letter writers, primarily Colonel William Fermor, Colonel Ed Rivers, and Arabella Fermor, Brooke spends a great deal of time detailing lives and customs of the various inhabitants of Canada. From Citation: Moss, Laura. The History of Emily Montague. The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.