FERRIER, SUSAN EDMONSTONE Scott ish novelist, born in Edinburgh on Sept. 7, 1782, was the daughter of James Ferrier, at one time one of the clerks of the court of session with Sir Walter Scott.
Susan Ferrier's first novel, Marriage (1818), was begun in concert with a friend, Miss Clavering, but this lady wrote only a few pages. It was followed in 1824 by The Inheritance, a better constructed and more mature work ; and the last and perhaps best of her novels, Destiny, appeared in 1831. All these novels were published anonymously. With their clever portraiture of con temporary Scottish life and manners, and even recognizable caricatures of some social celebrities of the day, they could not fail to become popular north of the Tweed. Many were the con jectures as to the authorship of the novels. In the Noctes Am brosianae (Nov. 1826) James Hogg is made to mention The In heritance, and adds, "which I aye thought was written by Sir Walter, as weel's Marriage, till it spunked out that it was written by a leddy." Scott himself gave Susan Ferrier a very high place indeed among the novelists of the day. In his Tales of My Land lord he calls her his "sister shadow," the still anonymous author of "the very lively work entitled Marriage." Lively, indeed, all her works are, written in clear, brisk English, and with an inex haustible fund of humour. Her books portray the society in which she lived, caricaturing with terrible exactness its hypocrisy, boastfulness, greed, affection and undue subservience to public opinion. Yet she wrote less to reform than to amuse. In this she is less like Maria Edgeworth than Jane Austen. Maria Edge worth was more of a moralist ; her wit is not so involuntary, her caricatures not always so good-natured. But Jane Austen and Susan Ferrier were genuine humorists, and with the latter especially a keen sense of the ludicrous was always dominant. Her humorous characters are always her best. But if she was not a moralist, neither was she a cynic ; and her wit, even where it is most caustic, is never uncharitable.
Susan Ferrier lived at Morningside House and in Edinburgh for more than twenty years after the publication of her last work. Lockhart describes her visit to Scott in May 1831. She died on Nov. 5, 1854, in Edinburgh. She left among her papers a short unpublished article, entitled "Recollections of Visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford." This is her own very interesting account of her long friendship with Sir Walter Scott. It contains some impromptu verses written by Scott in her album at Ashestiel. See Sir G. B. S. Douglas, The Blackwood Group (Famous Scots Series, 1897) ; Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier, collected by John Ferrier, ed. J. A. Doyle (1898) .