Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller
by Grigor Urquhart (1835)
Born 1812
Died 11 March 1876
Lochinver, Sutherland
Nationality British
Other names Harriett Myrtle
Spouse(s) Hugh Miller

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller or Harriet Myrtle (1812 – 11 March 1876) was a British writer for children.

Life

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer was baptised in 1812. She was the daughter of an unsuccessful merchant and wife of Hugh Miller. After her father's trading failure it fell on her mother's family to pay for her education.[1]

In 1831 she moved to Cromarty where her father had retired and met Hugh Miller. Both of them were well read and intelligent; she had lived in Edinburgh's literary society. Her family objected but they were engaged in 1832 and they married on 7 January 1837. Her husband was appointed to manage The Witness in Edinburgh and his wife assisted and wrote contributions to the periodical. Hugh was busy and they brought up four children.[1] Despite this she wrote a large number of moral and entertaining works for children. In addition she wrote a novel titled Passages in the Life of an English Heiress in 1847.[2] Although the novel flopped and sank without trace, it was a brave attempt to write fiction from an evangelical perspective at a time when most Scottish evangelical Presbyterians considered the genre flippant, corrupting and intrinsically immoral.

Her husband, unwell and depressed, possibly fearful of insanity, shot himself at their home in Edinburgh on 23 December 1856. Their daughter, the poet and novelist Harriet Miller Davidson was said to have been affected by this the rest of her life.[3] Lydia was left to complete the publication of Hugh's unfinished works and to assist Peter Bayne in writing her husband's biography. In widowhood, she was financially assisted by a civil list pension that was given to her in 1857.[2] She moved to Inverness in 1863 where she continued to write for children.[1]

Lydia Miller died on 11 March 1876, at her son-in-law's manse at Lochinver, Sutherland, and was buried on 20 March beside her husband in the Grange cemetery in Edinburgh.

Works

Adventure of a Kite [4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Marian McKenzie Johnston, ‘Miller , Lydia Mackenzie Falconer (bap. 1812, d. 1876)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 2 Feb 2015
  2. 1 2 Sutherland, John (2014). The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. p. contents. ISBN 1317863321.
  3. ↑ W. G. Blaikie, ‘Davidson, Harriet Miller (1839–1883)’, rev. Pam Perkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 8 Dec 2014
  4. ↑ "Harriet Myrtle (Myrtle, Harriet, 1811?-1876) - The Online Books Page". onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved 30 September 2017.

Further reading

  • Johnston, Elizabeth Sutherland in co-operation with ... Marian McKenzie (2002). Lydia : wife of Hugh Miller of Cromarty. East Linton: Tuckwell. ISBN 186232221X.
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