Which early English-language writings recorded exploration and settlement in British North America?

Early English-language writings that recorded exploration and settlement in British North America were primarily produced by visitors, including explorers, travelers, and British officers and their wives. These foundational documents—often consisting of charts, diaries, journals, and letters—established a documentary tradition that remains central to the Canadian literary imagination.1

Key early accounts of exploration and travel include:

• Samuel Hearne: A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean (1795).1
• Sir Alexander Mackenzie: Voyages from Montreal…Through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (1801).1
• Simon Fraser: The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser, 1806–1808 (1960).1
• John Franklin: Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823).1
• John R. Jewitt: A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt (1815), a notable captivity narrative.1

Records of daily life and settlement include The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe (1911), which documents life in Upper Canada, and Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838). Additionally, works by the Strickland sisters, such as Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and Catherine Parr Traill’s Backwoods of Canada (1836), provided influential prose sketches regarding the realities of immigrant life.1