Christian Isobel Johnstone: From Centrifugal to Centripetal

Abstract

Christian Isobel Johnstone’s life could not be more different from that of Susan Ferrier and Mary Brunton. Whereas Brunton’s and Ferrier’s mediators write about their relatives in a peculiar game of biographical hide-and-seek when describing the two writers’ lives and personalities, Johnstone was a professional writer, or, to put it as forcefully as possible, she was an active public figure who lived in Scotland’s capital city, working right at the heart of its flourishing publishing industry. James Barron provides the following information about the founding of the Inverness Courier in 1817:

The first editor was Mrs. Johnstone, the author of several novels, such as ‘Elizabeth de Bruce, ’ ‘Clan Alpin, ’ [sic] ‘Meg Dods’ Cookery Book, ’ &c. This lady afterwards edited Tait’s magazine. Mrs. Johnstone was assisted in her labours by her husband, an old schoolmaster and good grammarian. (1903: 1:133)

Rather than an unintentional slip which moves her Highland novel to the Alps, Barron is surely thinking of Clan-Alpine from Scott’s epic poem The Lady of the Lake, which accounts for the typo. Minor quibbles apart, her position as a prominent figure, novelist and editor is unquestionable.

Mrs Johnstone’s Tales of the Irish Peasantry bring her honourably to our mind. Pray offer the good bravehearted lady my hearty remembrances, good-wishes and applauses. — Radicalism, I grieve to say, has but few such practical adherents! Radicalism, when one looks at it here, is — a thing one had rather not give a name to! (Thomas Carlyle, in Carlyle and Carlyle 1985: 11:234)