Else Seel's "Canadian Diary": A diary or an autobiographical narrative?

This thesis examines the work of a female German-Canadian immigrant, Else Seel (nee Lubcke), who moved to this country in 1927 and, with her German-born husband, Georg Seel, settled in a log house in the tiny pioneer community of Wistaria, BC. Else Seel's major contribution to Canadian pioneer literature is her Canadian Diary published in Germany in 1964. This work has its origins in the manuscript that Else Seel started during her passage to Canada and kept for twenty-seven years until the death of her husband in 1950, after which she moved from Wistaria.

The thesis begins by outlining circumstances that resulted in Else Seel writing the Canadian Diary, as well as her aim in writing it.

The first chapter acquaints the reader with Else Seel's biography--both in Germany and in Canada. The second chapter examines the criteria which make the diary a literary genre; this examination provides the necessary foundation for the comparison of Else Seel's manuscript with the published work that constitutes the bulk of chapter three. Moreover, chapter three also sheds light on the reasons for the transformation of the original diary into a published autobiographical narrative. This is achieved through the comparison of the differences between Seel's original diary and the published work and the presentation of some of the problems she encountered in attempting to have her manuscript published. The result of this transformation is that the published work does not conform with the criteria that characterize a diary. Despite the title Canadian Diary, Else Seel's published work is not a diary, but an autobiographical narrative. This is so because a number of characteristic features of the diary, that are discussed in chapter two, are absent in the published work.