Susanna Moodie's book Roughing It in the Bush details her experiences as a Canadian immigrant. In the 1830s, Moodie moved to Upper Canada, which would later become Canada West, close to what is now Peterborough, Ontario. She published a "guide" to settler life for British subjects considering moving to Canada at the recommendation of her editor. The first edition of Roughing It in the Bush appeared in London in 1852. (then Toronto in 1871). It was Moodie's most popular piece of writing. The piece is organized as a sequence of chronological drawings and combines autobiographical and novelization of her experiences. A trilogy that Moodie authored to describe the immigrant experience in Canada included Roughing It in the Bush. Flora Lyndsay (1854), a prologue that details the preliminary immigration preparations, and Life in the Clearings, an examination of Canadian cities and institutions, round out the trio (1853). In Canada, Moodie had experience publishing brief articles for periodicals. Before Victoria Magazine was shut down in 1838, she and her husband served as its editors. Beginning in late 1838, she made contributions to the Literary Garland of Montreal.
English-born Susanna Moodie, who lived in Canada from 6 December 1803 to 8 April 1885, wrote about her experiences as an immigrant in what was then a British province. On the banks of the River Waveney in Suffolk, Susanna Moodie was born in Bungay. In a family of authors that also included Agnes Strickland, Jane Margaret Strickland, and Catharine Parr Traill, she was the youngest sibling. In addition to publishing books about Spartacus and Jugurtha, she wrote her first children's book in 1822 and other children's stories in London. She participated in the Anti-Slavery Society in London and transcribed Mary Prince's story, a former slave from the Caribbean. She wed retired officer and Napoleonic War veteran John Moodie on 4 April 1831. Moodie emigrated to Upper Canada in 1832 together with her husband, a British Army officer, and daughter. Her brother Samuel Strickland (1804–1867) worked as a surveyor on a farm in Douro Township, close to Lakefield, north of Peterborough, where the family eventually lived. The farm now serves as a museum and houses antiquities. The museum, which Samuel founded, was formerly an Anglican church and has a view of Susanna's former canoeing spot on the Otonabee River.
