Memoirs Of A Highland Lady: v. 1 & 2 (Canongate Classics) - Softcover

Elizabeth Grant

3.52

54 ratings by Goodreads

9780862413965: Memoirs Of A Highland Lady: v. 1 & 2 (Canongate Classics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0862413966 ISBN 13: 9780862413965

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2001

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These recollections of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus have been popular since first published in 1898. The recent discovery of the original manuscript has now made it possible to publish the complete text in one volume. Elizabeth Grant describes her earliest years in Edinburgh and London, where her father, Sir John Peter Grant, pursued his legal and political ambitions. Holidays were spent amongst the leisured members of her class in spas and resorts, and at Oxford where her uncle was Master of University College. She describes the trauma of a broken engagement and her agonies, echoing the problems suffered by her father, as his legal and political ambitions collapsed, with the direst of consequences for the family. An Indian judgeship provides an unexpected avenue of escape from Sir John Peter's creditors. Her memoirs end with the 33-year-old Elizabeth finding her own future happiness in marriage to an Irish landowner - the subject of the sequel, "The Highland Lady in Ireland".

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Review:

"If you have never read it before, do so now...compelling...delicious insights into a way of life long passed, as well as glimpses of the familiar...a warm, human, revealing account of a young woman's life." (Scottish Review of Books)

About the Author:

Elizabeth Grant (1797-1885) was born in Edinburgh's fashionable New Town. Most of her childhood was spent in London and on the family estate, Rothiemurchus, on Speyside. She was educated by governesses and in the social graces by various tutors, finally entering Edinburgh society at the end of the Napoleonic wars.

The trauma of a broken engagement was followed by the disastrous failure of her father's career. This involved a huge burden of debt which, in 1820, forced the Grants to retreat to their Highland home. As her contribution to improving the family fortunes, Elizabeth and both her sisters wrote articles for popular magazines of the day.

In 1827 the family left Scotland for India when her father was appointed to a Judgeship in Bombay. It was here that she met and married Colonel Henry Smith, seventeen years her senior. They left for Ireland the following year to live at Baltiboys, her husband's newly inherited estate situated near Dublin.

She devoted herself to raising a family and took up the leading role in managing and improving their impoverished estate. For over half a century Baltiboys was to be her home, her life and her occupation, her resolve never failing even after the death of her husband and her only son.

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