Publisher's Synopsis
Marriage (1818) is the shrewdly observant tale of a young woman's struggles with parental authority and courtship. Like her contemporaries, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, Susan Ferrier adopts an ideal of rational domesticity, illustrating the virtues of a reasonable heroine who learns to act for herself. This new edition features an introduction incorporating recent critical work on national identity and gender, and firmly situating the novel within the context of both Scottish literature and women's writing................... Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (7 September 1782 - 5 November 1854) was a Scottish novelist. Her novels, giving vivid accounts of Scottish life and presenting sharp views on women's education, remained popular throughout the 19th century. Life: Susan Ferrier was the youngest daughter of Helen Coutts (1741-1797) (daughter of Robert Coutts, a farmer near Montrose) and James Ferrier (1744-1829), Writer to the Signet and one of the principal clerks of the Court of Session, in which office he was a colleague of Sir Walter Scott. Her father came from Linlithgow. She was probably born at Lady Stair's Close, Edinburgh, as the ninth of ten surviving children. The family moved in 1784 to 11 George Street in Edinburgh's New Town. Ferrier was privately educated. Through her family she came to know many notable Edinburgh people, including Sir Walter Scott and the novelist Henry Mackenzie. In 1797 her father took her in 1797 to Inveraray, home of his client and patron John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll. She became a friend of the family, especially of a granddaughter, Charlotte Clavering (died 1841), with whom she corresponded. Clavering was initially involved in the writing of Ferrier's first novel Marriage, although in the end her contribution to it was limited to the section entitled 'The History of Mrs Douglas'.Some of the letters between Ferrier and Clavering can be found in the front matter of a six-volume edition of the novels. East Morningside House The grave of Susan Ferrier, St Cuthberts Churchyard, Edinburgh Gatepost sign After her mother died Ferrier kept house for her father because her three older sisters were married. Like many well-to-do Edinburgh families, they took a house outside the city in the summer, East Morningside House, and while there she wrote The Inheritance. Although she still wished her work to appear anonymously, her identity was widely known by then. In 1811 Ferrier visited Walter Scott at Ashiestiel Farm and House on the banks of the River Tweed, near Clovenfords in the Scottish Borders, and again in 1829 and 1831 at his new house, Abbotsford. They enjoyed each other's company and he wrote of her: "This gifted personage besides having great talents has conversation the least exigeant of any author, female at least..., simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking."He mentioned her in the same sentence as Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney in 1825.Ferrier's account of the visits was eventually published posthumously in the magazine Temple Bar (1874). Ferrier's own tastes in literature appear in her correspondence. She was an admirer of Jane Austen and of Scott (although she had reservations about some works of his), but scorned John Galt and John Gibson Lockhart.The last of several visits to London was paid in 1830 to see an oculist, when she stayed for a few days at the villa of Lord Casilis in Isleworth, the model for the house known as Woodlands in Destiny. Brought up in the Church of Scotland, Ferrier joined the Free Church after the Disruption of 1843. She died on 5 November 1854 at her brother's house at 38 Albany Street, Edinburgh, and was buried with her family in St Cuthbert's Churchyard.The grave lies on a main dividing wall immediately north of the church. Ferrier's eldest brother married the sister of John Wilson, who wrote under the pseudonym Christopher North................
