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.
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
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
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...
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...
Literary responses
Samuel Johnson
Hostile response was immediate and clamorous. Johnson was accused of inveterate prejudice against Scotland and the Scots, an accusation which continued to be repeated even by some readers, like Anne Grant
, who were admirers...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
Spence's title-page bears a quotation from James Cririe
, a little-known Scots poet whom Burns had praised (and whom she cites several times later in her text). Perhaps for the sake of her original audience...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
Literary historian Pam Perkins
points out that Spence here describes a feminocenric cultural milieu, and develops a confident voice in doing so., that she foregrounds her own roots in the Aberdeen Enlightenment, and that her...
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
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...
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...
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...
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...