Elizabeth Grant

07 May 1797 - 16 November 1885

EG (both under that name and her later one of Elizabeth Smith) was a talented autobiographer, an essayist, and a diarist. Selections from her memoirs and journals were edited and published subsequent to her death and provide vivid pictures of social and political life in Scotland, England, India, Ireland (including the Great Famine), and France during the nineteenth century.

BirthName: Elizabeth Grant
Nickname: of Rothiemurchus
Married: Smith
Pseudonym: A Lady
As was the usual practice in Victorian periodicals, her writings for magazines generally appeared without her name, or sometimes as By a Lady. It was another Elizabeth Grant, of Carron (c. 1745-1814), who wrote the song Roy's Wife o' Aldivalloch, which was praised by Burns .

Milestones

7 May 1797

EG was born at 5 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh.

Grant, Elizabeth. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Editor Tod, Andrew, Canongate, 1988, 2 vols.

1: 3

8 May 1845

Towards the end of her two-year stay in France with her family, Elizabeth Smith (formerly EG ) began writing the recollections of her life, which were later published as the popular Memoirs of a Highland Lady.

Grant, Elizabeth. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Editor Tod, Andrew, Canongate, 1988, 2 vols.

1: preface

16 November 1885

Elizabeth Smith (formerly EG ) died at the age of eighty-nine.

Grant, Elizabeth. “Preface”. Memoirs of a Highland Lady, edited by Angus Davidson, J. Murray, 1950, p. v - vi.

February 1898

The first public edition of EG 's Memoirs of a Highland Lady appeared, edited and abridged by her niece, Jane Maria Strachey .

Grant, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. Memoirs of a Highland Lady, edited by Andrew Tod, Canongate, 1988.

vii

Biography

Birth and Family

7 May 1797

EG was born at 5 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh.

Grant, Elizabeth. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Editor Tod, Andrew, Canongate, 1988, 2 vols.

1: 3