Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus

Elizabeth Grant , married name Smith (born May 7, 1797 in Edinburgh , † November 6, 1885 in Baltiboys, Blessington , County Wicklow , Ireland), known as The Highland Lady , was a Scottish diary author. To distinguish it from the Scottish song poet of the same name, Elizabeth Grant of Carron (1745 / 46-1828), it is often referred to as Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus .

Elizabeth Grant was born in House No. 5, Charlotte Square , Edinburgh. She was the eldest of five children of the lawyer and politician Sir John Peter Grant and his wife Jane, née Ironside. She spent most of her childhood in London and on the family heritage in Rothiemurchus, Inverness-shire. After the father's political ambitions had consumed almost the entire fortune, the family finally moved to Rothiemurchus in 1820.

To avert the financial ruin, the grants went to India in 1827 , where the father had received the position of a teacher in Bombay . Here Elizabeth met her future husband, the cavalry officer Colonel Henry Smith from Baltiboys, Ireland, whom she married in Bombay in 1829. In April 1830 the couple returned to Ireland. Elizabeth spent the next 55 years up to her death as a landlady on her husband's impoverished estate in County Wicklow. She took care of the estate management, raised the children Jane (* 1830), Anne (* 1832) and John (* 1838) and wrote down her memoirs.

Works

• Memoirs of a highland lady: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus , edited by Andrew Tod, 2 volumes - Edinburgh: Canongate, 1988, reprinted 1992
• The highland lady in Ireland , edited by Patricia Pelly and Andrew Tod - Edinburgh: Canongate, 1991
• Memoirs of a highland lady, 1797-1827 , edited by A. Davidson - London: J. Murray, 1950
• A highland lady in France: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, 1843–1845 , edited by Patricia Pelly and Andrew Todd - East Lothian: Tuckwell, 1996

literature

• Tod, Andrew: The pleasure and pitfalls of editing the works of the "Highland Lady" . In: Smout, Thomas Christopher; Lambert, Robert A. (ed.), Rothiemurchus: nature and people on a Highland estate 1500–2000 - Dalkeith: Scottish Cultural, 1999, pp. 124-32
• Calvert, David: Elizabeth Grant and the Victorian popular press . In: Smout, Thomas Christopher; Lambert, Robert A. (ed.), Rothiemurchus: nature and people on a Highland estate 1500–2000 - Dalkeith: Scottish Cultural, 1999, pp. 133-40
• James, Dermot; Ó Matiú, Séamas (ed.): The Wicklow world of Elizabeth Smith 1840–1850 - Dublin: Woodfield Press, 1996
• TeBrake, Janet K: Personal narratives as historical sources: the journal of Elizabeth Smith 1840-1850 . History Ireland, 3: 1 (1995), pp. 51-55
• Christine Lodge: Smith, Elizabeth (1797–1885) , In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Web links

• Doune House, Elizabeth Grant's temporary residence in Rothiemurchus ( June 25, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive )