Mrs. Leprohon

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (January 12, 1829 – September 20, 1879), born Rosanna Eleanor Mullins, was a Canadian writer and poet. She was "one of the first English-Canadian writers to depict French Canada in a way that earned the praise of, and resulted in her novels being read by, both anglophone and francophone Canadians."

Life

Leprohon was born on January 12, 1829, in Montreal to Francis and Rosanna Mullins. The second daughter of a wealthy merchant, she was educated at the Convent of the Congregation of Notre Dame. She later wrote the poems "A Touching Ceremony" and "On the Death of the Same Reverend Nun" to honor the nuns and convent.

She "published her first poetry, at age 17, in Literary Garland, followed by serialized novels of manners set in England, published annually from 1848 to 1851." Ida Beresford, her first novel, first ran in the Garland in nine instalments in 1848. The novel was praised by

Susanna Moodie, who called it "a story written with great power and vigor" that promised its author "a bright wreath of fame."

On June 17, 1851 Rosanna married Dr. Jean-Lucien Leprohon, and went to live with him in Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu. Within a year she was pregnant; she would go on to have 13 children (of whom eight survived). Her literary output suffered. By 1859, though she was back in Montreal and had resumed writing, with a new novel, Eveleen O'Donnell, serialized in Boston magazine The Pilot.

The experience of being married to a French-Canadian, and living in the heart of French Canada, gave her a perspective denied to most English Canadian novelists—one she put to use in her next novel, The Manor House of De Villerai: A Tale of Canada Under the French Dominion, which was published in installments by the Montreal Family Herald in 1859-1860. In this novel, "Leprohon used a Canadian setting and depicted events of crucial importance in Canadian history. She depicted these events, furthermore, from the point of view of French Canadians," something new in English-Canadian literature.