The Highland Lady In Ireland: Journals 1840-50 (Canongate Classics)

The Highland Lady In Ireland: Journals (Canongate Classic) [Elizabeth Grant, Andrew Tod, Patricia Pelly] on leondumoulin.nl *FREE* shipping on.
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The Highland Lady in Ireland: Journals 1840-50

This involved a huge burden of debt, which in , forced the Grants to retreat to their Highland home. As her contribution to improving the family fortunes Elisabeth and both her sisters wrote articles for popular magazines of the day. In the family left Scotland for India when her father was appointed to a Judgeship in Bombay. It was here that she met and married Colonel Henry Smith, seventeen years her senior. They left for Ireland the following year to live at Baltiboys, her husband's newly inherited estate situated near Dublin. She devoted herself to raising a family and took the leading role in managing and improving their impoverished estate.

They vividly depict the day to day life of her family, her immense efforts to improve the Baltiboys estate and how she coped with the terrible ravages of famine.


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Her sharp observations of all classes of society however, from corrupt landowners to the poor and often dissolute farm-workers, make this book a memorable and important chronicle of her times and a unique contribution to the social history of Ireland. Paperback , pages. Published January 1st by Canongate Books first published January 1st Journals Canongate Classics, No. Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Highland Lady in Ireland , please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Highland Lady in Ireland. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Mar 03, Sally George rated it really liked it. Human nature does not change as this diary shows and it was written nearly years ago. There are so many similarities to today and to me on a personal level.

The Highland Lady in Ireland: Journals - Elizabeth Grant - Google Книги

The book Elizabeth Smith mentions she is reading to her children - the life of Wilberforce - is the book my husband is reading! She reads Jane Eyre the year after it was published and can't possibly let her girls read it due to 'the warmth of the love passages'! Also it was a difficult time during the potato famine and there was no money Human nature does not change as this diary shows and it was written nearly years ago. Also it was a difficult time during the potato famine and there was no money to keep the laundry maid.

This brought to mind the luxury of the washing machine, which is my laundry maid! As I have written a diary myself for 46 years, I just love historical ones, which mine is fast becoming. So I easily forgive her the lack of today's PC and it must be said it's not all on her side What we say openly and without a thought today would seem shockingly tasteless, even obscene to her. Speaking of her fair handedness, whether one is socially high or low;she would be hard on a renter stole some shillings, but was a tad easier on her own brother who swindled thousands of pounds from bank investors, However she was harder on him than most would be.

Most would excuse the criminal brother all together or omit the information. Highland Lady does not; for how else would I know of his crimes but though her.?

Editorial Reviews

Elizabeth Grant was born the daughter of a Scottish Laird who ruined himself and threw the position away So one can see what drives her in the way of caring for "her people" her renters and what she sees as morel failings that invariably lead to sorrow. Grant keens for what Highland heritage was lost though her father's, and then her bother's' high living and swindling One person found this helpful. This book is an amazing piece of literature. 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. I read the book and I also have used it for several years as a reference book to evaluate a great many items and situations.

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.


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    • 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: Scottish Cultural Press, 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.