Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains

Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
465K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals Foreign LiteratureChildren's Literature Pioneer LifeWilderness SurvivalFamily BondsSisters' GrowthGrowing UpIndependent WomanhoodAdventure TaleNature WritingCanadian FrontierYouth Reading

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains by TraillAuthor: Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2005

Editor's review

This work is a noteworthy early Canadian English-language frontier survival narrative. Set on the Rice Lake Plains of Ontario, Catharine Parr Strickland Traill tells the story of young people surviving in the wilderness. Unlike Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the book emphasizes children's cooperation, practical skills, and adaptation to the natural environment, bearing clear marks of the pioneer era. For readers studying the origins of Canadian literature, frontier narrative, or the juvenile adventure tradition, it is an important text for understanding nineteenth-century North American settler imagination. This Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook is easy to search and cite, suitable as a course companion or for independent reading. While reading, note how the author balances adventure with moral instruction and how she depicts Indigenous peoples and the natural landscape—details that often reveal period attitudes more than plot itself. The ebook has no modern introduction; reading alongside background materials is recommended.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a page or two first to gauge the English difficulty, then decide whether to read straight through or select chapters for close reading.
  2. Read alongside materials on nineteenth-century Canadian pioneer history to understand the setting.
  3. Take notes on the depiction of the natural environment and Indigenous peoples, and make thematic notes.
  4. If using it for a course, select survival episodes for comparison with the Robinson Crusoe tradition.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47

FAQ

What is the connection between this book and Robinson Crusoe? The 'Crusoes' in the title borrows from the Robinson Crusoe tradition of island survival, but the story is set on the Rice Lake Plains of North America, and the characters are a group of young people rather than a lone sailor. The focus is on cooperation and adapting to the wilderness rather than survival on a deserted island—the two belong to the same narrative lineage but emphasize different themes.
Does this edition have a Chinese translation or annotations? According to the provided information, this is an English public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, with no mention of a Chinese translation or modern annotations. Reading requires some English proficiency, and historical background questions will need to be researched separately.
Is it suitable for children? The juvenile adventure plot is appealing in itself, but the book was written in the nineteenth century, its language and some attitudes differ from contemporary ones, and it has no modern annotations. Adults should look through it first, or use it as parent-child reading and discussion material about differences across eras, rather than letting children read it independently without guidance.

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About the author

Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899 Author

Catharine Parr Strickland Traill (1802–1899) was one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century English-Canadian literature and nature writing. Eight of her works are held in this collection, spanning fiction, nature observation, and children's stories, mostly centred on Canadian pioneer life and forest scenery. Her representative work The Backwoods of Canada records immigrant daily life and the natural environment in epistolary form, while Canadian Crusoes and Lost in the Backwoods use wilderness-survival narratives to portray rural landscapes. North American Wild Flowers reflects her interest in botany, and books such as Little Downy show her writing for young readers. Her plain, delicate prose combines documentary detail with an educational purpose. Public information is limited, so biographical details are omitted here.