Susan Edmonstone Ferrier - The Novels

The Novels

Ferrier wrote three novels. Marriage was written in 1810 but much revised and came out anonymously only in 1818, when the Edinburgh publisher William Blackwood paid £150 for it. Its success was remarkable, and it appeared in French in 1825. In 1824 Blackwood was prepared to pay £1000 for the second novel, The Inheritance. The third novel, Destiny, was dedicated to Scott, who found that Robert Cadell of Edinburgh was willing to pay £1700 in 1831. The author sold the copyrights in 1841 to Richard Bentley, who reissued them with authorial revisions in an illustrated edition. This was reprinted for the first time in Ferrier's name in 1851. The library edition of 1881 and 1882 included a Memoir. A book-length memoir and correspondence appeared in 1898. Modern critical appraisals have been sparse, but the National Library of Scotland produced a lengthy catalogue for an exhibition in 1982.

The novels, which combine humour with vivid accounts of Scottish social life and sharp views on marriage and female education, retained their popularity through the 19th century, but then it began to wane, although editions of Marriage have appeared sporadically since the Second World War. According to an early 20th-century history of literature, "In the novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier there is something of the rough sarcasm of Smollett, mingled with a strong didactic flavour and with occasional displays of sentiment that may be due to Mackenzie. To her personal friend Scott, she may have owed something in her studies of Scottish life, but Maria Edgeworth was her principal model." The book criticizes her works for loose plotting and "coarse workmanship", but praises her vigour and calls it "fresh and interesting." It has been argued recently that the three novels form a trilogy – an extended inquiry on the subjects of nation, history, and the evolution of female consciousness.