Available as eBook
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 GrantEdited by Patricia Pelly
Elisabeth Grant (1797-1885) was born in Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town. Most of her childhood was spent in London and 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 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 Elisabeth 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 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 of her only son. Between 1845 and 1854 she wrote her Memoirs for the family’s pleasure; they were later edited by her niece Lady Strachey and published in 1898, thirteen years after her death.