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This remarkable anthology gives the reader a unique insight into the ideas and actions of women in Scotland over two centuries. The selection ranges across the entire social spectrum, from the aristocratic advice of Lady Grisell Baillie’s Household Book to the reminiscences and moral reflections of Janet Hamilton, a shoemaker’s daughter from Shotts. Geographically the approach is scarcely less broad, stretching from accounts of the Hebrides and Shetlands to voyages across the Pacific ocean. Each selection begins with a biographical note and includes guidance for further reading. The extracts are annotated throughout, making The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad a resource for students as well providing historical and aesthetic pleasure for the general reader.

Practical or whimsical, written for pleasure or for publication and profit, the extracts in The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad provide a vivid cross-section of half of Scotland’s culture from 1700 to 1900, using texts that have fallen out of print and including some previously unpublished material. Issues of class, gender and society are boldly illustrated, and the private and public life of the times can be read out of these works in ways that would not perhaps be possible from male writing of the period.

Dorothy McMillan lectures in the Department of English Literature at the University of Glasgow.

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CONTENTS

Lady Grisell Baillie (1665–1746) 
from The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie, published 1911

Lady Murray of Stanhope (1693–1759) 
from Memoirs of the Life and Character […] of Lady Grisell Baillie, published 1822

Alicia Cockburn (1713–1794) 
from Letters and Memoir of her Own Life, published 1900

Elizabeth Mure (1714–1795) 
from Selections from the family papers preserved at Caldwell, published 1883

Margaret Calderwood (1715–1774) 
from Letters and Journals of Mrs Calderwood of Polton in 1756, published 1884

Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard (1750–1825) 
from Lives of the Lindsays, published 1849

Anne Grant of Laggan (1755–1838) 
from Letters from the Mountains, 1773–1803, 1806 from Memoirs of an American Lady, 1808 
from Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs Grant of Laggan, 1844

Elizabeth Hamilton (1756–1816) 
from Memoirs of the Late Mrs Hamilton, 1818

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) 
from ‘Recollections written at the request of Miss Berry’, Hunter-Baillie Papers (HBII, 56C), Library of the Royal College of Surgeons 
from ‘Memoirs written to please my nephew, William Baillie’, Hunterian Society Deposit, MS 5613/68, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Library

Eliza Fletcher (1770–1858) 
from Autobiography, 2nd ed., 1875

Mary Somerville (1780–1872) 
from Personal Recollections, 1873

Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781–1857) 
from ‘Marriages are Made in Heaven’, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (1832) 
from ‘Mrs Hugo Reid’s Plea for Woman’, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine(1844)

Charlotte Waldie (1788–1859) 
from Narrative of a Residence in Belgium during the Campaign of 1815;and of a Visit to the Field of Waterloo, 1817

Janet Hamilton (1795–1873) 
‘Preface’, Poems and Essays of a Miscellaneous Character, 1863 
from ‘The Mother’s Mission’, Poems and Essays of a Miscellaneous Character, 1863 
from ‘Address to Working-Women’, Poems and Essays, 1863 
from ‘Reminiscences of the Radical Time in 1819-20’, Poems, Essays and Sketches, 1870

Fanny Wright (1795–1852) 
from A Course of Popular Lectures, 1829

Lady Lucy Clementina Davies (1795–1879) 
from Recollections of Society in France and England, 1872

Catherine Sinclair (1800–1885) 
from Shetland and the Shetlanders, 1840

Anne Chalmers (1813–1891) 
from Letters and Journals, 1912

Felicia Skene (1821–1899) 
from Wayfaring Sketches, 1847

Henrietta Keddie (1827–1914) 
from Three Generations, 1911

Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897) 
from ‘The Laws Concerning Women’, Blackwood’s Magazine (1856) 
from ‘the Condition of Women’, Blackwood’s Magazine (1858)

Isabella Bird Bishop (1831–1904) 
from A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1881 
from Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1911

Ellen Johnston (c. 1835–1873) 
‘Autobiography’ from Autobiography, Poems and Songs, 1867

Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming (1837–1924) 
from In the Hebrides, 1883 
from ‘Across the Yellow Sea’ Blackwood’s Magazine  (1890) 
from ‘The Offerings of the Dead’ British Quarterly Review (1885)

Flora Annie Steel (1847–1929) 
from India, 1905 
from The Garden of Fidelity, 1929