Rosanna Mullins Leprohon’s The Manor House of De Villerai, A Tale of Canada Under the French Dominion is a literary milestone—it is the first Canadian historical novel, in English or French, to rewrite the conquest of the French Canadians from the perspective of history’s vanquished. Its revisionary account of the fall of New France is framed around a love triangle between the heroine, Blanche De Villerai, her childhood betrothed, Gustave de Montarville, and Blanche’s servant, Rose Lauzon. Popular in its original serial publication and once widely reprinted in French translation, but now out of print, The Manor House of De Villerai is a long-overlooked Canadian classic.

In addition to the text originally serialized in the Family Herald magazine, this Broadview Edition includes extensive documents on the novel’s reception, Leprohon’s historical sources and literary precedents, and maps and art from the period.

Rosanna Mullins Leprohon's profile page

Andrea Cabajsky is an assistant professor at the Université de Moncton, where she teaches and does research in comparative literature, especially English- and French-Canadian Studies. She has published widely on the literary history of nationalism in romantic and Victorian Canadian and British literatures and is currently developing the curriculum for an approved new master’s program in comparative Canadian literature at the Université de Moncton.

Brett Josef Grubisic is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia and specializes in contemporary Canadian and UK fiction. His publications include Contra/diction (ed.), Carnal Nation (co-edited with Carellin Brooks), the City of Vancouver Book Award finalist The Age of Cities, and Understanding Beryl Bainbridge.

Andrea Cabajsky's profile page

“This Broadview edition of Rosanna Leprohon’s The Manor House of De Villerai belongs in the library of every student of early Canadian literature. Professor Cabajsky’s comprehensive and erudite introduction is extremely useful, as is her splendid assemblage of contemporary reviews, historical sources, and various visual documents, which allow for rich contextual reading. The text is meticulously edited and copiously annotated according to Broadview’s usual high standards.” — Janice Fiamengo, University of Ottawa

“This publication of The Manor House of De Villerai, the first of Rosanna Leprohon’s three historical novels, represents a welcome milestone in Canadian literary history. Never before issued in book form following its initial serialization in 1859-60, this hitherto neglected narrative, set in the era of the British conquest of Quebec, expresses many of the social and political concerns that shape Leprohon’s best-known work, Antoinette de Mirecourt (1864). Andrea Cabajsky’s excellent editing shows how this novel provides important insights into contemporary debates about cultural self-preservation as it presents the French-Canadian perspective to English-Canadian readers.” — Carole Gerson, Simon Fraser University