Susan Ferrier

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier was born in Edinburgh on 7th September 1782, daughter of Helen Coutts and James Ferrier, a Writer to the Signet. As a child she accompanied her father when his business as estate lawyer of the fifth Duke of Argyll took him to Inveraray Castle, the Duke's family seat on Loch Fyne.

Ferrier found the setting for her novels on these trips, and also made two influential friends in Lady Charlotte Campbell and Charlotte Clavering, the Duke's younger daughter and niece. After her mother's death in 1797, Ferrier kept house for her father until his own death in 1829. She did not marry but was very much a part of Edinburgh's close-knit literary social life. Sir Walter Scott, who was a friend of the family, was a…