Excuse my dust: Susan Ferrier
Susan Ferrier has been regarded by some as the Scottish Jane Austen. Her novels are a critique of arranged marriage, just as is Pride and Prejudice, but Ferrier lacks Austen’s light touch. Like Austen, Susan Ferrier never married, and she came from a similar social background to that of her English counterpart – a social milieu they both wrote about with devastating accuracy.
Susan Edmonstone Ferrier was born in1782 in Lady Stair’s Close in the Old Town of Edinburgh. She was the ninth of the ten surviving children of a busy Edinburgh lawyer and when she was two years old the big family moved to a larger, brand new house in George Street. James Ferrier was one of the principal clerks to the Court of Session, in which office he was a colleague of Sir Walter Scott. He was also legal adviser to the nobility, notably the Duke of Argyll, and Susan often visited the Argyll residence, Inveraray Castle, where she made friends with another guest, a girl from a similar background, Charlotte Clavering of Ardencaple.
In private, the two young women laughed together at the awfulness of the guests at Inveraray, and decided to write a novel together, basing their characters on the aristocrats they were obliged to mingle with. Charlotte wrote an outline, but Susan was not very enthusiastic about it – and so the latter wrote a new version. The resulting comedy of manners, Marriage, of which Charlotte wrote only one chapter, was published in 1818 and sold well, its readers having much malicious fun guessing on whom the characters were based.