Canadian Crusoes

Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains is a novel by Catharine Parr Traill published in 1852, considered the first Canadian novel for children. Written after The Backwoods of Canada, it is Traill's second Canadian book. It was first published in 1852 by London publisher Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Company.

Author's Preface:

IT will be acknowledged that human sympathy irresistibly responds to any narrative, founded on truth, which graphically describes the struggles of isolated human beings to obtain the aliments of life. The distinctions of pride and rank sink into nought, when the mind is engaged in the contemplation of the inevitable consequences of the assaults of the gaunt enemies, cold and hunger. Accidental circumstances have usually given sufficient experience of their pangs, even to the most fortunate, to make them own a fellow-feeling with those whom the chances of shipwreck, war, wandering, or revolutions have cut off from home and hearth, and the requisite supplies; not only from the thousand artificial comforts which civilized society classes among the necessaries of life, but actually from a sufficiency of “daily bread.”