Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Carolina Oliphant Lady Nairne
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Standard Name: Nairne, Carolina Oliphant,,, Lady
Birth Name: Carolina Oliphant
Nickname: The White Rose of Gask
Nickname: The Flower of Strathearn
Married Name: Carolina Nairne
Titled: Carolina, Baroness Nairne
Pseudonym: Mrs Bogan of Bogan
Pseudonym: B. B.
Used Form: Lady Carolina Nairne
COLN
was a significant member of the Scottish ballad revival, writing or radically revising something like eighty songs in the final decade of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Their various forms notably include the dramatic monologue. Much of her work was carried around the world by the Scottish diaspora, and many of her ballads are still well-known.
McGuirk, Carol. “Jacobite History to National Song: Robert Burns and Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne)”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Vol.
47
, No. 2/3, 1 June–30 Nov. 2006, pp. 253-87.
255
Her openly Jacobite songs, the earliest she wrote, are often considered the best. Changes in the cultural climate and in her personal belief-system meant that while many of her early songs are cheeky and irreverent, her later ones are more pious and correct.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
are long, rambling, obscure, with mis-spellings and grammatical mistakes.
Hopkins, James K. A Woman To Deliver her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution. University of Texas Press, 1982.
34
She said she had rejected literary skill as a bribe of the devil. She also (not unlike...
Intertextuality and Influence
Christian Gray
Two of these are answers to other Scots songs. CG
sounds in harmony with Carolina Nairne
's The Land o' the Leal (whose speaker fearlessly welcomes approaching death, beginning I'm wearin' awa', Jean), but...
Literary responses
Susanna Blamire
In 1886 the Dictionary of National Biography said SBdeserves more recognition than she has yet received.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
An article in the Journal of the Lakeland Dialect Society in 1947 argued that her best work was...
Literary responses
Lady Charlotte Elliot
LCE
received little critical attention either during or after her lifetime. The Athenæum obituary by Theodore Watts
described her as perhaps the latest noticeable addition to that bright roll of female poets of which Scotland...
It was probably SF
who, contributing to the oral tradition, recast Lady Carolina Nairne
's ballad The Laird o' Cockpen by adding two stanzas. These supply a conventional marriage ending: the poor but proud heroine...
Textual Production
Annie S. Swan
ASS
also used her new identity David Lyall for a large number of book titles, most of them novels after the first collection of essays. She published Lyall novels serially in the Leisure Hour Monthly...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Tytler
The book is prefaced by a glossary which informs the reader that Edinburgh is nicknamed Auld Reekie, that to gowl is to weep noisily, to rug and rive is to carry off by violence...
Timeline
1868: Emily Taylor (1795-18), who is remembered...
Writing climate item
1868
Emily Taylor
(1795-18), who is remembered for books connected with her school-teaching career, published Memories of some Contemporary Poets, with Selections from their Writings, with a good representation of women among her subjects (from...
By September 1887: William Walker published at Aberdeen The...
Writing climate item
By September 1887
William Walker
published at AberdeenThe Bards of Bon-Accord, 1375-1860, a history of poetry in Aberdeenshire, which had already appeared serially in the Herald and Weekly Free Press.
The volume is dated from...
By 26 October 1972: Helen Gardner edited The New Oxford Book...
Writing climate item
By 26 October 1972
Helen Gardner
edited The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1950, designed to update and replace Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
's Oxford Book of English Verse, 1900.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(26 October 1972): 11
Texts
Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Lady, and Finlay Dun. Lays of Strathearn. New Edition, Paterson and Sons, 1846.
Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Lady, and Caroline Oliphant. Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne. Editor Rogers, Charles, C. Griffin, 1869.
Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Lady, and Caroline Oliphant. Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne. Editor Rogers, Charles, J. Grant, 1896.
Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Lady. The Scotish Minstrel. Editor Smith, Robert Archibald, Robert Purdie, 1824, 6 vols.