Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anne Grant
-
Standard Name: Grant, Anne
Birth Name: Anne MacVicar
Married Name: Anne Grant
Nickname: Mrs Grant of Laggan
Pseudonym: the Author of Letters from the Mountains
AG
's life as woman of letters, which had its foundations in a bookish, colonial American childhood and isolated, late-eighteenth-century married years in the Scottish Highlands, was constructed during her residence in Edinburgh during the early nineteenth century. Her initial attitude to publication was ambivalent (no doubt because she hated being in financial need), but by the end of her life she came to see herself as a serious poet. Her letters are full of acute and up-to-the-minute literary judgements: particularly on women writers, among whom she has no sympathy for radicals. Her best-known work today is her biography of a colonial North American woman, a fascinating document in cultural history.
Anne Grant
was particularly enthusiastic. She said she could give a whole summer to this novel: they will tell you it is dry at first, and long throughout. The first volume you will find sterile...
Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown.
1: 152-4
Smith, Elizabeth. Fragments, In Prose and Verse. Editor Bowdler, Henrietta Maria, Richard Cruttwell.
151
In Edinburgh in 1803...
Friends, Associates
Eliza Fletcher
Hamilton, herself a conservative, set about de-demonizing EF
's political reputation. She had good success in persuading her friends that Mrs Fletcher was not the ferocious Democrat she had been represented, and that she neither...
politics
Eliza Fletcher
EF
took the side of Queen Caroline in the persecutions of her trial.
Fletcher, Eliza. Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh. Editor Mary, Lady Richardson, Printed at the offices of C. Thurman for private circulation.
128
She was actually detected shedding tears as the procession passed by during the visit of George IV
to Edinburgh in summer...
Literary responses
Eliza Fletcher
She received letters of praise and congratulation on this publication from a number of distinguished pens. Anne Grant
wrote characteristically that they far exceeded my expectations. She had expected exalted moral feeling, purity of sentiment...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's friends included other highly literate middle-class women such as Mary Berry
and Anne Grant
in Edinburgh. (Her friendship with Grant was maintained entirely by correspondence—she and her sisters hoped to visit Edinburgh in...
Textual Production
Catherine Fanshawe
The letters that CF
sent to Anne Grant
are not extant, but Grant's side of the correspondence leaves no doubt that the two were in constant dialogue about new books they had read, and their...
Literary responses
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's immediately posthumous reputation rested, like her writings themselves, on oral tradition. She had the admiration of William Cowper
and Walter Scott
, as well as Joanna Baillie
, Anne Grant
, and Mary Berry
Anne Grant
wrote prose remarks on his memory, a poem on his death, and Verses Addressed to Mrs Dunlop
of Dunlop, on reading Burns's letters to that Lady.
Grant, Anne. Poems on Various Subjects. Printed for the Author by J. Moir.
261-6
Friends, Associates
Mary Brunton
MB
's earliest close friend in Edinburgh was a Mrs Izett. When she dedicated her first book to Joanna Baillie
, this began a friendship between them. She was friendly with Anne Grant
(who was...
Health
Mary Brunton
Anne Grant
related the story of the three-day labour and great suffering. After the baby was born dead, MB
insisted on seeing it, held its hand, and said: The feeling this hand has caused to...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
This edition was published by Colburn
. EOB
's excellent scholarly introduction dwells on recent literary achievements of women. She does not explicitly identify the British ones she refers to, but they are clearly (as...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Letitia Barbauld
J. W. Croker
's notice in the Quarterly Review (in June 1812, wrongly attributed by some to Southey
) was most offensive of all. He reached for the gendered weapons so often drawn against Mary Wollstonecraft
Friends, Associates
Anne Bannerman
That summer she was a guest for some time in the house of Anne Grant
.