"The History of Emily Montague": the First Canadian Novel?

Abstract This article re-examines the long-standing claim that Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague (1769) should be regarded as the first Canadian novel. While the work has frequently occupied this position in literary histories because much of its action takes place in Quebec following the British conquest of New France, the study argues that geographical setting alone is insufficient to establish a work as a national novel. Drawing upon concepts of national literature, the article proposes a set of criteria by which a novel may be considered representative of a national literary tradition and evaluates Brooke's novel against these criteria. The analysis demonstrates that The History of Emily Montague remains fundamentally an eighteenth-century British novel of manners rather than a Canadian novel. Its protagonists are British rather than Canadian, its central concerns revolve around courtship, sensibility, social conduct, and marriage, and Canadian characters and perspectives remain largely marginal. Although the novel contains valuable observations on the landscape, society, and colonial administration of Quebec, these function primarily as a backdrop against which British cultural values and imperial assumptions are articulated. The article further explores Brooke's reuse of the narrative structure of The History of Lady Julia Mandeville, arguing that this dependence on an earlier British sentimental novel reinforces the work's literary and ideological orientation. The study concludes that The History of Emily Montague is more accurately understood as an early British novel about Canada—a hybrid combining the eighteenth-century novel of manners with elements of travel writing—rather than as the founding novel of Canadian literature. In doing so, the article contributes to ongoing discussions concerning the relationship between geography, colonial discourse, and the formation of national literary canons.