John Thurston considers the whole of Moodie's literary output, including her poems, short fiction, novels, and non-fiction, beginning with her youthful writing in England and culminating in an extensive analysis of her best-known work, Roughing It in the Bush. He establishes the biographical foundations of her writing, using recently discovered correspondence, and describes the historical issues and events that shaped her life and writing. Through current historicist and feminist literary criticism, Thurston achieves new insights into Moodie's writing. Locating tensions of class, gender, and race within her work, he places Moodie in both the established tradition of nineteenth-century British women writers and the less-familiar tradition of North American class conflict.

John Thurston is a one-time carnie who went on to become a writer and editor. With Carnie King, he brings together personal experience with his interest in popular culture. He lives in Ottawa.

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"A valuable book of very high quality ... It will be of great value to scholars in Canadian literature and women's studies." David Bentley, English, University of Western Ontario.