Anne Grant

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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.
Black and white engraving of Anne Grant by H. Robinson after a painting by K. Macleay. She sits in an armchair wearing a large ribboned cap and frilled collar tied with a black bow, with a shawl over her dress. Behind her is a dark curtain and a small table with books and papers. Above her right shoulder a window shows a Highland scene: a little boat on a tree-fringed loch and hills or mountains behind.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Robert Burns
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, 1803.
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...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Hamilton
While in Wales they visited Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby (the ladies of Llangollen) and in the Lakes they stayed with Elizabeth Smith and her family.
Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818, 2 vols.
1: 152-4
Smith, Elizabeth, 1776 - 1806. Fragments, In Prose and Verse. Editor Bowdler, Henrietta Maria, Richard Cruttwell, 1811.
151
In Edinburgh in 1803...
Friends, Associates Felicia Hemans
While in Scotland she met not only Scott and Jeffrey , she met in person her publisher William Blackwood , writer Anne Grant , critic John Wilson , and sculptor Angus Fletcher .
Lawrence, Rose. The Last Autumn at a Favorite Residence, with Other Poems. G. and J. Robinson, etc. and John Murray, 1836.
347
Hughes, Harriet Browne Owen, and Felicia Hemans. “Memoir of Mrs. Hemans”. The Works of Mrs. Hemans, W. Blackwood, 1839, pp. 1-315.
201
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...
Friends, Associates Anne Bannerman
That summer she was a guest for some time in the house of Anne Grant .
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...
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 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 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
Literary responses Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
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 Anne Hunter
Francis Jeffrey 's notice in the Edinburgh Review was a classic of damning by faint praise: he found most of the poems very decently written but extremely deficient in fire and animation.
qtd. in
Hunter, Anne. The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter, Haydn’s Tuneful Voice. Editor Grigson, Caroline, Liverpool University Press, 2009.
67
Anne Grant
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 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...

Timeline

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Texts

Grant, Anne. Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; J. Ballantyne, 1814.
Grant, Anne. Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1811.
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1806, 3 vols.
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807, 3 vols .
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809, 3 vols.
Grant, Anne. “Letters Written by Mrs. Grant of Laggan Concerning Highland Affairs and Persons Connected With the Stuart Cause in the Eighteenth Century”. Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston, edited by James Robert Nicolson Macphail, Edinburgh University Press, 1896, pp. 248-30.
Grant, Anne. Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Editor Grant, John Peter, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, 3 vols.
Grant, Anne. Memoirs of an American Lady. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808, 2 vols.
Grant, Anne. Memoirs of an American Lady. Editor Wilson, James Grant, Books for Libraries Press, 1972.
Grant, Anne. Poems on Various Subjects. Printed for the Author by J. Moir, 1803.
Wilson, James Grant, and Anne Grant. “Preface, Memoir of Mrs. Grant”. Memoirs of an American Lady, edited by James Grant Wilson and James Grant Wilson, Books for Libraries Press, 1972, p. ix - xxxvi.
Grant, Anne. The Highlanders and Other Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808.