The Highland Lady In Ireland

Edited and Introduced by Patricia Pelly and Andrew Tod. ‘They have made an Irishwoman of you now, and may they know the value of the daughter they adopted into their country.’ Elizabeth Grant’s sister The early life of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, so memorably recorded in her Memoirs of a Highland Lady has had an avid readership since the book’s first publication in 1898. This volume takes up the story after she arrives in Ireland, following her marriage to Colonel Smith of Baltiboys. This journal, begun in 1840, will be recognisable to her many followers by the charm, vigour and intelligence that fill every page. They vividly depict the day to day life of her family, her immense efforts to improve the Baltiboys estate and how she coped with the terrible ravages of famine. Her sharp observations of all classes of society however, from corrupt landowners to the poor and often dissolute farm-workers, make this book a memorable and important chronicle of her times and a unique contribution to the social history of Ireland.

Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, 'The Highland Lady' whose Memoirs and Diaries are such a vivid and individual record of the first half of her long life in Scotland, England, India, France and Ireland, continued to keep a journal during the 1850s.

Women in Ireland 1800-1918 presents a valuable and significant collection of over 100 sources and documents relating to the public and private aspects of women's lives in Ireland during the period 1800-1918. The documents reveal aspects of the women's working lives, educational experiences, involvement in politics and of their private lives such as contraception, childbirth, love, marriage and religion. Each section has a comprehensive introduction which discusses the contents of the documents. As the first major survey of Irish women's lives during this period, it will appeal to those who want a deeper understanding of how women of all classes lived their lives and it will prove indispensable to second and third level students, those attending women's studies courses, as well as a wide general readership interested in assessing the role of women in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Irish history.

Edited and introduced by Andrew Tod. ‘I was born on the 7th May 1797 of a Sunday evening at No. 5 N. side of Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, in my father’s own lately built house and I am the eldest of five children he and my mother raised to maturity.’ Thus opens one of the most famous set of memoirs ever written. Since its first bowdlerised edition in 1898, they have been consistently in print. This is the first ever complete text. Written between 1845 and 1854 the memoirs were originally intended simply for Elizabeth’s family, but these vivid and inimitable records of life in the early 19th century, and above all on the great Rothiemurchus estate, full of sharp observation and wit, form an unforgettable picture of her time. The story ends with the thirty-three-year-old Elizabeth finding her own future happiness in marriage to an Irish landowner, Colonel Smith of Baltiboys. ‘A masterpiece of historical and personal recall.’ Scotsman

Beginning in 1843, this journal describes the experiences of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus during time spent in France. It depicts her day-to-day life, whilst also offering insights into French society and matters, and British political events.

This volume charts the rise of professional women writers across diverse fields of intellectual enquiry and through different modes of writing in the period immediately before and during the reign of Queen Victoria. It demonstrates how, between 1830 and 1880, the woman writer became an agent of cultural formation and contestation, appealing to and enabling the growth of female readership while issuing a challenge to the authority of male writers and critics. Of especial importance were changing definitions of marriage, family and nation, of class, and of morality as well as new conceptions of sexuality and gender, and of sympathy and sensation. The result is a richly textured account of a radical and complex process of feminization whereby formal innovations in the different modes of writing by women became central to the aesthetic, social, and political formation of British culture and society in the nineteenth century.