ROSANNA LEPROHON: BRIDGING MONTREAL’S DUALITIES WITH FINESSE

The first Canadian novel was not written by a Canadian. Published in London in 1769 and written by Francess Brooke, an Englishwoman who had just returned from five years with the British garrison in Quebec City where her husband was chaplain, The History of Emily Montague took as its setting and subject the world of French Canada after the Conquest. In the novel, Brooke set in motion all the social elements of eighteenth-century Quebec—British soldiers, Canadien peasants, high society French, Indians—against the natural backdrop of the New World.

One hundred years later, Montreal novelist Rosanna Mullins Leprohon (1829-79) dealt with the same subject matter and many of the same themes as Brooke. But what is curious and fascinating about Leprohon is that though she wrote in English, her literary reputation and renown were much greater in French. …