Susan Ferrier revisited

 

National Library of Scotland - 1982

Searching for another book on a top shelf last week, I came across the above pamphlet, published by the National Library of Scotland to commemorate the bicentenary of Susan Ferrier's birth. Before cataloguing details of the Exhibition put on at the National Library, there is an Appreciation of my four times great-aunt by His Honour Judge James E.M. Irvine; a Commentary on the Novels of Susan Ferrier by Dr. Ian Campbell of the University of Edinburgh; and a synopsis of Maplehurst Manor, an undeveloped novel of Ferrier's, very possibly written after the success of her three published books, again by Dr. Campbell.

What I find interesting is the refrain that Susan Ferrier appeared to be balancing her quality as a comic satirist with that of an intrusive moralist. The usual argument is that the latter wins out, particularly as regards her last novel, Destiny. Here is Judge Irvine in his Introduction to her middle novel, The Inheritance (Three Rivers Books, 1984): All three novels have the same faults and virtues... they are all too full of sententious digressions (fortunately easily skipped)... In her last novel, Destiny, written at the time of her father's death the didactic moralist seems to have gained the ascendant over the comic satirist. It is my contention that Ferrier's didactic stance has been increasingly exaggerated in recent criticism.

However, back in 1929, Margaret Sackville, in her Introduction to Ferrier's Destiny, would not have agreed with the last sentence: 

[It] has a brilliant beginning but unfortunately becomes tedious as the story proceeds on account of the heavy masses of indigestible moralising which it contains... So it happens that side by side with her magnificent humour are passages of the same depressing piety which made what were called the Sunday-books of my childhood so formidable, in which dreadful little prigs lived (or more usually died) for the edification of their worldly relatives.

I have Blogged on all three of Ferrier's novels - Marriage on 2nd March 2021; The Inheritance on 25th September 2021; and Destiny on 23rd March 2021; as well as a Blog on Ferrier's homes and burial place under the heading An Edinburgh Pilgrimage (14th September 2021). I must say, when I read the books, the humour far outweighed the moralising in the majority of cases. Ian Campbell makes some valid points in his  assessment of the author and her works:

No celebratory exhibition will raise her to the rank of a Scott or a Galt...she remains a Scottish novelist of the second rank, deserving some revival of her earlier popularity and certainly deserving to be read...what has emerged is the thoughtful observation of Scottish life, the manipulation of points of view and the admission of the necessity of change...she has the wit (and the inventiveness) to catch the tone of her time and her society, the skill to make several societies interesting, the tact to make the didactic intentions tolerable, and the finesse to handle the Scottish content of her novels. I could not have put it better myself!

Susan Ferrier's bust in the National Library

In my Library:

1897: Sir George Douglas - The 'Blackwood' Group (Miss Ferrier)  (Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier)

1929: ed. John A. Doyle - Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (Eveleigh Nash & Grayson)

1957: Aline Grant - Susan Ferrier of Edinburgh (Alan Swallow)

1965: W.M. Parker - Susan Ferrier and John Galt (The British Council)

1982: Judge Irvine et al. - Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (National Library of Scotland)

1984: Mary Cullinan - Susan Ferrier (Twayne Publishers)

1988: Aileen M. Riddell - At the Verge of their proper sphere: early Nineteenth Century Scottish Women Novelists. Chapter Five (University of Glasgow PhD. Submission)

2009: Victoria Chance - The Romantic Novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Lambert Academic Publishing)

2013: Andrew Monnickendam - The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations. Chapter Two 'Susan Ferrier and Lucre-banished Clans' (Palgrave Macmillan)