Memoirs of a Highland Lady by Elizabeth Grant

Memoirs of a Highland Lady by Elizabeth Grant

Edited and introduced by Andrew Tod

'I was born on the 7th May 1797 of a Sunday evening at No.5 N. side of Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, in my father's own lately built house and I am the eldest of five children he and my mother raised to maturity.'

Thus opens one of the most famous set of memoirs ever written. Since its first bowdlerised edition in 1898, they have been consistently in print. This is the first ever complete text.

Written between 1845 and 1854 the memoirs were originally intended simply for Elizabeth's family, but these vivid and inimitable records of life in the early 19th century, and above all on the great Rothiemurchus estate, full of sharp observation and wit, form an unforgettable picture of her time. The story ends with the thirty-three- year-old Elizabeth finding her own future happiness in marriage to an Irish landowner, Colonel Smith of Baltiboys.

A masterpiece of historical and personal recall. Scotsman

Professor Elizabeth Grant is an architectural anthropologist, criminologist and academic with a distinguished record in the field of Indigenous architecture. From 2000-2017, Elizabeth was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. Elizabeth holds an adjunct Professorship at the University of Canberra and Associate Professorship at the University of Queensland and has published three books and over 70 papers. Elizabeth is a Churchill Fellow, a member of Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), and has been honoured with the International Prison and Correctional Association (ICPA) Excellence in Research Award for her pioneering work on the design of (non)custodial environments for Indigenous peoples. She worked on numerous Indigenous projects, prepared submissions and acted as an expert witness for Government Inquiries, coronial inquests and Royal Commissions.

Dr Kelly Greenop is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture at The University of Queensland. She conducts research within Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) and Architecture Theory Criticism History Research Centre (ATCH). Her research has focused on work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in urban Brisbane, using ethnographic techniques to document place experiences and attachment, and the importance of housing, place, family and country for urban Indigenous peoples. She was elected to membership of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in 2009 and has received multiple awards for research and teaching.

Dr Albert L. Refiti is a researcher and Senior Lecturer in Pacific Architecture, Art and Space at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Albert has worked in architectural practice in Auckland and London. His academic work focusses on Indigenous thought and methodologies, new ethnography and anthropology of Pacific material culture and contemporary architecture. His most recent work takes a critical look at architectural spaces that constructs communal memory in museums, diasporic communities, and neoliberal cultural institutions in the wider Pacific.

Daniel J. Glenn, AIA, AICAE is an award-winning architect specialising in culturally responsive architecture and planning for diverse cultures and Indigenous communities. He is the Principal of 7 Directions Architects/Planners, a Native-owned firm in Seattle, Washington. His work and philosophy reflect his Crow tribal heritage. He has been featured in the film, Aboriginal Architecture: Living Architecture (Bullfrog Films), and four of his projects are published in the book, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands (University of Minnesota Press 2013). He is a regularly invited speaker at national conferences, and he appeared in 2016 in Native American Green: New Directions in Tribal Housing in the Public Broadcasting Service series, Natural Heroes. He will be part of a team of North American Indigenous architects led by Douglas Cardinal representing Canada in the 2018 Venice Biennale with an entry entitled, Unceded.