Ferrier

Ferrier, SUSAN EDMONSTON, Scottish novelist, was born in Edinburgh in 1782. Her father, James Ferrier, one of the principal clerks of the Court of Session, and the colleague in that office of Sir Walter Scott, lived on terms of intimacy with the wits and literati of his day in Edinburgh, and Miss Ferrier's talents and quick powers of observation were early called into play in the midst of the literary society in which her youth was passed. Her first work, Marriage, begun in 1810 in concert with Miss Clavering, but soon relinquished by the latter, appeared in 1818, and this was followed by The Inheritance (1824), and Destiny (1831). The merit of these tales, which are characterised by genial wit, a quick sense of the ludicrous, and considerable ability in the delineation of national peculiarities, is sufficiently proved by the fact that by some Scott was credited with the authorship. Miss Ferrier enjoyed the esteem and friendship of Sir Walter, who repeatedly gave expression to his appreciation of her talents, praised her portraits of society, and called her his 'sister-shadow,' and derived consolation from her sympathy in the season of gloom which darkened the close of his life. She figures in Lockhart's Life of Scott, and amongst her papers was found an article, 'Recollections of Visits to Ashiestiel and Abbotsford,' published, along with a Memoir, in Bentley's edition of her works (6 vols. 1881). She died at Edinburgh, November 5, 1854.