Julia Mandeville [Frances Brooke] (1724–1789), the History of Emily Montague

Abstract

Frances Brooke was an English novelist, playwright and translator, who migrated to Canada in the 1760s to join her husband, a military chaplain. She wrote Canada’s first novel, The History of Emily Montague which is a sentimental novel, written in epistolary form. The main letter writers include Emily Montague, the heroine, Colonel William Fermor, Colonel Ed Rivers, and Arabella Fermor. The story plot is largely a love story, but the letters, often written when the characters are travelling across Canada, offer descriptions of scenery and relations between the English, French, Huron, and Iroquois in Quebec. At times, the form closely resembles the travel writings of the period, with such scenes providing opportunities for the characters to reflect on their own emotional experiences in comparative form. Eighteenth-century novels offered readers new experience through which they could imaginatively and emotionally engage, as part of an exercise in personal improvement.