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Articles

Volume 19, Number 2 (1994)

Illustrations for The Backwoods of Canada

  • Elizabeth Thompson
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1994-06-06

Abstract

The illustrations commissioned for Catherine Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada are derived from a number of sources and, although some are poorly integrated with or unconnected to the text, they comment on and illustrate Traill's cultural assumptions and points of view. Both Traill and the illustrators, the London firm of Sly and Wilson, use the picturesque as a shaping device; when this convention fails to capture the surroundings, Traill turns to scientific reporting and the illustrators use standard botanical, ornithological, and zoological drawings. However, the many disjunctions between illustration and text graphically point out the difficulties faced by the Old World in its attempts to see and understand the New World.