Born in Edinburgh, 7th September 1782. Her first work, “Marriage” (1818), was followed by “The Inheritance” (1824) and “Destiny” (1831); for the three she received £150, £1,000, and £1,700. Miss Ferrier enjoyed the esteem and friendship of Sir Walter Scott, who was by some for a time credited with the authorship of her tales. Her “Recollections of Visits to Ashiestiel and Abbotsford” were published, along with a Memoir, in Bentley’s edition of her works (1881). She died at Edinburgh, 5th November 1854.

Personal

  This gifted personage, besides having great talents, has conversation the least exigeante of any author, female at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered with; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee; and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking.

Marriage, 1818

  I am almost sorry when I ought to be glad, now that I send you the end. I have had more enjoyment and pleasure in the progress of your work for the last twelve months than I have ever had in any that have passed through my hands. I am now as impatient to have it fairly afloat as I was to have it concluded, being confident that there will only be one opinion of its merits.

Inheritance, 1824

  On Wednesday I dined in company with Sir Walter Scott, and he spoke of the work in the very highest terms. I don’t always set the highest value on the Baronet’s favourable opinion of a book, because he has so much kindness of feeling towards every one; but in this case he spoke so much con amore, and entered so completely and at such length into the spirit of the book, and of the characters, as showed me at once the impression it had made on him. Every one I have seen who has read the book gives the same praise to it.

  Is a model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the narrative is perfect. Indeed the form of the story could not be improved—a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction; and though the book is a long one, it contains not a superfluous page.

Destiny, 1831

  Miss Ferrier was a very careful craftswoman—a fact to which much of her success has been attributed—and it was not until 1831 that her next book, “Destiny,” appeared. Much of it was written at Stirling Castle, while she was on a visit to the wife of the Governor of the garrison. The new novel was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, to whom the authoress had good reason to feel obliged, for it was largely in consequence of his skilful bargaining that she had received for it the large sum of £1,700 from Cadell. The prices paid to her by Blackwood for her two previous books had been £150 and £1,000 respectively.

General

  There is a lady here whom I think you must know,—Miss Ferrier; her father is a very old man, and she, who is not very young, and has indifferent health, secludes herself almost entirely with him. The fruits of this seclusion appeared three or four years since in the form of a novel called “Marriage:” it was evidently the production of a clever, caustic mind, with much good painting of character in it, that could not be produced without talent and considerable knowledge of men and books. I have just finished a hasty perusal of a new work by the same author, called “The Inheritance,” and join the general voice in pronouncing it clever, though there is, perhaps, too much caricature throughout. Pray read it; there is strong sense in it, and it keeps attention awake even when it does not entirely please. There are some here who praise this work beyond measure, and even hold it up as excelling the invisible charmer.

  To a warm heart, a lively fancy, and great powers of discrimination, Miss Ferrier has added variety of knowledge, and a graphic art of describing all she sees, and all she feels, which give her a distinguished place among the novelists of the day.

  This lady was a Scottish Miss Edgeworth—of a lively, practical, penetrating cast of mind; skilful in depicting character and seizing upon national peculiarities; caustic in her wit and humour, with a quick sense of the ludicrous; and desirous of inculcating sound morality and attention to the courtesies and charities of life. In some passages, indeed, she evinces a deep religious feeling, approaching to the evangelical views of Hannah More; but the general strain of her writing relates to the foibles and oddities of mankind, and no one has drawn them with greater breadth of comic humour or effect. Her scenes often resemble the style of our best old comedies, and she may boast, like Foote, of adding many new and original characters to the stock of our comic literature.

  Of the four requisites of the novelist, plot, character, description, and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. The lapse of an entire half-century and a complete change of manners have put her books to the hardest test they are ever likely to have to endure, and they come through it triumphantly.

  Miss Ferrier was, in point of natural ability, far above the average novel-writer of to-day. We doubt whether at the present moment there exists in England any living authoress (unless it be Mrs. Oliphant or Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie) who stands, in acuteness, in humor, in insight into character, much above the writer of “Inheritance.” We shall not do Miss Ferrier injustice if we place her only a little below Miss Austen in point of humor, and Miss Edgeworth in point of wit and sterling sense. But high as we are inclined to put Miss Ferrier among the female novelists of England, we admit at once that she exhibits a want of literary skill which would hardly be betrayed by any one among the number of authors whose works are to be read in every month’s magazine, and are forgotten before the month is out.

  Miss Ferrier’s novels show keen powers of observation, and are brightly and clearly written. They are chiefly satirical sketches of character in the upper classes of Scottish society. They belong to the same school as Miss Edgeworth’s stories, and are marked by the same rather stiff didacticism…. In spite of their old-fashioned character they still have attraction due to genuine wit and vivacity.

  She was a keen satirist, but showed up the follies and vices of society more from an overpowering sense of humour than from any intention to be a reformer. Her pictures of contemporary Scottish life and character are most amusing.

  Miss Ferrier lived to old age, and became, we are told, so completely occupied with religious questions as to dislike and disapprove of the delightful works of her earlier days, which is an unfortunate circumstance. She has retained a high and quite individual place in fiction, one of a band of three women who form a sort of representative group in their way of the three countries, which, it is to be hoped, no unpropitious fate will ever sunder or make to be other than one.

  It is more than eighty years since “Marriage” was published, and you can buy it to-day in any book-shop for fourpence halfpenny. That shows at least a singularly robust power of survival, and immortality is freely claimed for authors who have very much less to show for it than a lady who has amused four generations of readers. If she had been content to do that, her fame might rest secure; but unhappily she was possessed with the desire to convey moral instruction, and that has overlaid her humour and her genuine faculty of creation with a dead weight of platitudes under which they must inevitably sink.