The Highland Lady in Ireland: Journals 1840-50

by Elizabeth Grant and Andrew Tod

Book Overview

The early life of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, so memorably recorded in her Memoirs of a Highland Lady has had an avid readership since the book's first publication in 1898. This volume takes up... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0862413613
• ISBN13: 9780862413613
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Amazing Mirror into the Social Issues of the Time:

This book is an amazing piece of literature. It rings true, for the social and political issues of that particular time in Ireland/England/Scotland. It's rare that we get such a peek into the personal life of a person and the lives around her. She was a compassionate person, one who chose to stay and try to relieve the lives of her tenants. It is easy to shake our fingers at some of her pronouncements, especially about the Irish peasantry and culture around her, and the class bias is broad. However, she stayed (mostly) and is correct in her observations of the idle rich (the Milltowns, etc) and the opposite ends with the peasantry. Stupidity abounds in both reaches. I found her candor refreshing and some of what we would now consider 'politically incorrect', to ring true. There is stupidity in all classes, and the two extremes that she writes about sounds truthful even today. This is a very good book to read, not especially for what was happening politically or historically in that part of Ireland, but in the social behaviors of this class and culture. It is a special insight into a world that has so many of the same issues and challenges that we have today. Our response to issues might go in and out of fashion, but humanity doesn't really change. I would have loved to read her writings here before family members got ahold and fed to the fire.

This was a PRIVATE diary

I don't think Elizabeth Grant ever intended this diary for other people to read - unlike her Memoirs, specifically written for her grandchildren. I think it was used to let off her frustration and anger during what must have been a stressful time. She was born into a wealthy and influential family, which through its own financial mismanagement lost all its own money and more. She, her asthmatic husband and her teenage family had to live off a run-down estate (her husband's brother had nearly ruined it) and an army invalid pension during the Famine, and they decided to stay and try to alleviate the ills of the Famine for their own tenants and the rest of their district too. It's hardly surprising that irritation and exasperation show up in spades - this diary must have been her only safe outlet. Anyone with huge, necessary investments to make and no money to do it with will understand her troubles. It's hardly surprising that any sort of mismanagement irritated her.If anyone wants to know about her father and brother, they should find out what they'd done by reading the footnotes, the Memoirs, and also : Rothiemurchus : nature and people on a Highland estate 1500-2000 / T.C. Smout & R.A. Lambert. Dalkeith : Scottish Cultural Press, 1999. Meanwhile she lists what the family was reading; what she was writing - earnings from her writing, not the estate's income, kept two local schools open and her daughters clothed - and the book ends with a real mother's angle on the first wedding among her children, including a complete list of the trousseau and wedding presents. Readers cannot help but learn something about the period from what she describes. Anyone who was critical of members of the Irish establishment and the activities of the British government during the Famine can hardly be faulted.