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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Maria Margaret Grant

Author: Maria Margaret Grant (1841–1928)

Alternate Name(s): Miss Grant (familiar name)

Biography: Maria Margaret Grant was born in 2 September 1841 in Inverness (or Invermoriston), Scotland, the eldest daughter of solicitor Patrick Grant and Emilie Ballie. Her father was a Writer to the Signet, Sheriff Clerk of Inverness-shire, and apparently wealthy; while her mother was connected to the Ballie family of Dochfour House. As a child, the family moved to Edinburgh. When her father died in 1870, she and her mother and sister Helen moved to Reigate where Grant would live the remainder of her life. The following year, she published her first novel, Artiste (1871), and followed with eight more titles in the next fifteen years. Her fiction generally received good reviews and several titles were published in America or on the continent. In 1878, she financed a short-lived weekly periodical Piccadilly edited by her friend Theodore Watts Dunton. Her only sister Helen married twice: first to the Rt. Hon. William Nathaniel Massey, M. P.; and second to Sidney Bouverie Pusey. Grant lived the last thirty years of her life with her sister and brother-in-law. She died on 11 March 1928 in Chelsea.

Author Tags:

References: British Census (1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901. 1911); pers inf (William Ingram)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Artiste.  3 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1871.
  2. Bright Morning.  3 vol.  London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
  3. Lescar, the Universalist.  3 vol.  London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
  4. The Sun-Maid: A Romance.  3 vol.  London: Bentley, 1876.
  5. My Heart's in the Highlands.  3 vol.  London: Bentley, 1878.
  6. Prince Hugo: A Bright Episode.  3 vol.  London: Chapman and Hall, 1880.
  7. One May Day: A Sketch in Summer Time.  3 vol.  London: Chapman and Hall, 1881.
  8. Jeanie Lairn's Wee Laddie: A Simple Story of the Old Town.  1 vol.  London: Hatchard, 1881.
  9. Cara Roma.  2 vol.  London: Chapman and Hall, 1885.