Writing emigration: Canada in Scottish romanticism, 1802–1840

This thesis is a study of the representation of emigration to Canada in Scottish Romantic periodicals and fiction, and of the relationship between these genres and the little-studied genre of the emigrant's guide. Chapter One tracks the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review's reviews of books on Canadian topics and demonstrates how the rival quarterlies respond to, and intervene in, the evolving public debate about emigration. Chapter Two examines depictions of Canada in Blackwood's Magazine and Fraser's Magazine, and reveals connections between these magazines' engagement with Canadian affairs and the concurrent reception of Scottish Romanticism in early Canadian literary magazines. Chapter Three argues for an understanding of the emigrant's guide as a porous form that acts as a bridge between nonfictional and fictional representations of emigration. Chapter Four reads novels with emigration plots in relation to the pressures of American, Canadian and transatlantic canon formation, arguing that these novels trouble the stark division between the American and Canadian emigrant experiences which was insisted upon by contemporary commentators and which continues to underpin criticism of transatlantic literary works. Chapter Five considers the relationship between Scottish Romanticism and nineteenth-century Canadian literature, a relationship which has often been framed in terms of the portability of a 'Scottish model' of fiction associated most strongly with Walter Scott. Overall, this thesis contends that foregrounding the literature of emigration allows for greater understanding of the synchronicity of Scottish Romanticism and the escalation of transatlantic emigration, offering an alternative to conceptions of Canada’s colonial and transatlantic belatedness.