Emily Pauline Johnson was Canada’s most esteemed woman writer from the 1890s until long after her death in 1913, admired not only for her literary abilities but also for her charismatic talent as a reciter and performer of her own poems and stories. Drawing on her part-Native identity, she became a strong advocate of the rights and views of First Nations Canadians. She was born in 1861 on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford in what is now the province of Ontario, the youngest of the four children of an English-born mother and a mostly Mohawk father. Descended from a line of Mohawk orators and dignitaries, her father, George Henry Martin Johnson (1816-84), became a church translator, a position that enabled him to meet her mother, Emily Howells Johnson (1824-98), whose sister was…
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Citation: Gerson, Carole. "Pauline Johnson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5231, accessed 24 November 2024.]
