Sarah Scott - Later Life

Later Life

In 1763, Lady Barbara Montagu gained a pension of three hundred pounds. This eased the couple's finances sufficiently that Sarah Scott would not need to write again while she lived. Lady Barbara died in 1765, and Sarah Scott wrote The History of Sir George Ellison in 1766. The novel was, again, utopian, but it was derivative of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison. The next year, she attempted to create a real Millennium Hall in Buckinghamshire. She invited Sarah Fielding, among others, to come live with her. Elizabeth Montagu donated livestock, land, and staff. However, the project fell through in a couple of months.

In 1772, she responded to emerging populism with The Life of Theodore Aggrippa d'Aubigne, which was a life of a Protestant who fought against both mob rule and the absolute monarchy of the king. She also wrote, that year, The test of filial duty, in a series of letters between Miss Emilia Leonard, and Miss Charlotte Arlington, which was an epistolary novel addressing the rights of a daughter to choose her husband. It was also a partial response or imitation of Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1770).

In 1775, Edward Montagu, Elizabeth's husband, died. Elizabeth then gave Sarah two hundred pounds a year. In 1778, Sarah's father died, which gave her more money. Thus, she produced no more published works.

She had suffered from migraines throughout her life. On 11 November 1795, she died in Catton. By that point, she was largely forgotten.