Excuse my dust: Christian Johnstone
In spite of a professional and influential career which lasted all her adult life, and her several best-sellers, Johnstone was described by a contemporary as having an ‘unassuming disposition [which] shrank from anything like publicity or conspicuousness’ (W. Anderson, The Scottish nation, 1859-63). An early marriage which ended in divorce may have played a part in this personal modesty, and there was certainly no social status in the role of a professional woman writer. However forty years after her death an Englishwoman was proud to announce she was the ‘first woman journalist in Edinburgh since Mrs Johnstone's day’ (F. White, A fire in the kitchen: the autobiography of a cook (1938), p. 168).
What fiction did she write?
The Saxon and the Gael (1814), published anonymously, is attributed to her
Clan-Albin, a National Tale (1815) (ed. Andrew Monnickendam, ASLS, 2003)
Elizabeth de Bruce (1827)
Nights of the Round Table (1832)
The Edinburgh Tales (1845-6), a collection of fiction by herself and other authors, mostly women, first published in parts.
Acknowledgement: 'This document /webpage/text was prepared by Helen Vincent of the National Library of Scotland for the Women's Forum workshop at NLS in 2010, and is re-used here by permission.