author

Mrs. F. (Frederick) Beavan

1818–1897

An Irish-born writer and teacher, she drew on years spent in colonial New Brunswick to create lively poems and stories about backwoods life. Her best-known work offers a rare firsthand picture of settler experience in 19th-century Canada.

1 Audiobook

Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick Gleaned from Actual Observation and Experience During a Residence of Seven Years in That Interesting Colony

Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick Gleaned from Actual Observation and Experience During a Residence of Seven Years in That Interesting Colony

by Mrs. F. (Frederick) Beavan

About the author

Born Emily Elizabeth Shaw in Belfast around 1818, she was the daughter of a sea captain and later moved to New Brunswick, where she studied and then taught. In 1838 she married Frederick William Cadwallader Beavan, and her writing began to appear under the name Mrs. F. Beavan.

She is best remembered for Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick, a book shaped by seven years of observation and experience in the colony. Her work combines poetry, storytelling, and social description, giving modern readers a vivid sense of pioneer life, domestic routines, and the challenges of settlement.

After her years in Canada, she also lived in England and Australia. Though not widely known today, her writing has lasting value as both literature and a firsthand record of 19th-century life in New Brunswick.