Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart

1796-1867

Julia Catherine (Beckwith) Hart is credited as being the first Canadian novelist. She was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on 10 March 1796. She travelled to Kingston, Upper Canada, in 1820 to live with her aunt where she instituted a bilingual (French/English) boarding school for girls, which she continued to run for two years after her marriage to George Henry Hart, an English bookbinder, on 3 January 1822. Julia Beckwith’s first novel was St. Ursula’s Convent, or, The Nun of Canada: Containing Scenes From Real Life (1824). Though Julia wrote the manuscript in 1813, when she was just seventeen years old, she withheld it for eleven years before Hugh C. Thomson, a Kingston publisher, printed the first edition in two volumes. Hart and her husband moved to Rochester, New York in 1824, where she published her second novel, Tonnewonte, or, The Adopted Son of America: A Tale Containing Scenes From Real Life (1824). When Julia’s husband secured a position working for the New Brunswick Crown Land Office in 1831, the couple returned to Fredericton.  There she made regular contributions to James Hogg’s weekly paper, the New Brunswick Reporter, and completed the manuscript for a third novel entitled Edith, or, The Doom (c. 1851). Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart died on 28 November 1867 in Fredericton. 

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Fredericton

Archival Material

• Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart fonds
  ⌄
  Location

  University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections

  Website/Catalogue Record

  View Archival Record

  Retrieval Number

  MG L 18

  Date Range of Material

  1846-1852

  Extent

  12 cm of textual records

  Scope and Content Note

  This fonds documents aspects Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart's literary career and personal life. It includes original manuscripts of Edith or the Doom (volumes 1 and 2), letters, reviews, and biographical material including letters from David Bugbee, J. Hammond, John S. Saunders, and George Roberts.