Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters

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Broadview Press, Oct 16, 2006 - Fiction - 334 pages

The prize-winning entry in a national competition for distinctively Canadian fiction, Winona was serialized in a Montreal story paper in 1873. The novel focuses on the lives of two foster-sisters raised in the northern Ontario wilderness: Androsia Howard, daughter of a retired military officer, and Winona, the daughter of a Huron chief. As the story begins, both have come under the sway of the mysterious and powerful Andrew Farmer, who has proposed to Androsia while secretly pursuing Winona. With the arrival of Archie Frazer, the son of an old military friend, there is a violent crisis, and the scene shifts southward as Archie takes the foster-sisters via Toronto to his family’s estate in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River. Farmer follows, and the narrative moves towards a sensational climax.

The critical introduction and appendices to this edition place Winona in the contexts of Crawford’s career, the contemporary market for serialized fiction, the sensation novel of the 1860s, nineteenth-century representations of women and North American indigenous peoples, and the emergence of Canadian literary nationalism in the era following Confederation.

 

Contents

Acknowledgements
7
Introduction
9
A Brief Chronology
62
A Note on the Text
65
Editorial Emendations
69
Lineend Hyphenated Compounds in the Original Text
74
WINONA OR THE FOSTERSISTERS
77
The Discourse of Womanhood
287
Editorials on Literature and Publishing from Desbaratss Papers
309
Prospectus for The Favorite
316
Reports of the 1873 Autumn Assizes Peterborough Ontario
320
Illustrations
322
Select Bibliography
328
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Len Early is Associate Professor of English at York University, Toronto.

Michael A. Peterman is Professor of English at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

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