Prolific and versatile Belfast-born writer almost unknown at home

Elizabeth Hamilton was born into an Ulster-Scots family in Belfast in either 1756 or 1758 but probably in 1756.

She was a daughter of Charles Hamilton, a Scottish merchant, and Katherine Mackay, whose brother was minister of First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street.

She had a sister, named Katherine after her mother, and a brother, named Charles after his father, who spent much of his time in Bengal with the East India Company and gained fame as a writer and translator, especially of ‘al-Hedāya’, the magnum opus of Islamic jurisprudence authored in Persian by the Islamic jurist Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani (1135-1197).

Although Belfast-born, Elizabeth spent the greater part of her life in Scotland. She moved there in 1762, following the death of her father, and initially lived with her paternal aunt (a Mrs Marshall) near Stirling. She subsequently lived in Edinburgh.

While her initial literary efforts were directed in supporting her brother Charles in his orientalist and linguistic studies, Elizabeth achieved distinction in her own right as an essayist, poet, satirist and novelist. After Charles’ death (of tuberculosis) in 1792 she continued to publish orientalist scholarship, as well as historical, educationalist and theoretical works.

In 1796 she produced a satire entitled ‘Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah’ which purports to be the impressions of an Indian Rajah who travels to England. Four years later she published another satire, ‘Memoirs of Modern Philosophers’, which poked gentle fun at William Godwin’s circle. However, she was favourably disposed to the feminist views of Mary Wollstonecraft, by whom Godwin had a famous daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of ‘Frankenstein’.

None of this should occasion too much surprise because she was born into a family of ‘New Light’ Presbyterians and would have absorbed the values of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Anti-clericalism was not a significant feature of the Scottish Enlightenment, unlike for example the Enlightenment in France, for the very good reason that so many of its advocates were sons of the manse or closely related to it. Thus, she was a moderate rather than an extreme radical.

Urging greater educational opportunity for women, she thought of this taking place within an essentially Christian and middle-class framework with a strong emphasis on a woman’s responsibility for the domestic side of family life.

Her most important educational works are ‘On the Formation of Religious and Moral Principle’ (1806), and ‘Hints addressed Letters on Education, Essays on the Human Mind’ (1796), ‘Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education’ (1801), and ‘Letters addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman to the Patrons and Directors of Schools’ (1815). While writing these books she became a great admirer of the theories of the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.

Her most popular work, ‘The Cottagers of Glenburnie’, was a novel written in 1808 with the purpose of highlighting the living conditions of the Scottish peasantry with a view to improving the quality of their lives.

Two features of the book merit special attention: the extensive use of Scots vocabulary and idioms and the passages inspired by David Manson, the Belfast schoolteacher whose students included Henry Joy McCracken and Mary Ann McCracken.

With respect to the former, for example characters constantly use expressions based on the word ‘fash’ (to bother or to trouble), such as ‘we cou’dna be fashed’ (i.e. ‘we are not at all inclined/interested’ in doing something).

With respect to the latter, Chapter XVIII, entitled ‘Hints concerning the Duties of a Schoolmaster’, is essentially a paean of praise for and a promotion of the progressive educational and pedagogical theories and practices espoused by the Cairncastle-born Manson. She was clearly very impressed with Manson, as is evidenced by this extract from a lengthy footnote:

‘David Manson’s extraordinary talents were exerted in too limited a sphere to attract attention. He consequently escaped the attacks of bigotry and envy; but the obscurity which ensured his peace, prevented his plans from obtaining the notice to which they were entitled; nor did their acknowledged success obtain for him any higher character, than that of an amiable visionary, who, in toys given to his scholars, foolishly squandered the profits of his profession. A small volume, containing an account of the school, rules of English grammar, and a spelling dictionary, is, as far as the writer of this knows, the only memorial left of a man, whose unwearied and disinterested zeal in the cause of education, would, in other circumstances, have raised him to distinction’.

(There is a Blue Plaque erected by the Ulster History Circle and the Ulster-Scots Agency in honour of David Manson at 2-6 Waring Street, which was once the site of his school.)

‘Glenburnie’ continued to be published well after Hamilton’s death in abridged and cheaper editions. By 1822 it had run into its seventh edition and in 1828 a German edition appeared in Berlin (‘Die Hüttenbewohner von Glenburnie’). It also enjoyed considerable success across the Atlantic. Sir Walter Scott regarded Elizabeth’s ‘genius’ as ‘highly creditable to their country’ (by which he meant Scotland). In his estimation, she portrayed ‘the rural habits of Scotland’ with ‘striking and impressive fidelity’.

As well as Sir Walter, she also was a close friend of Joanna Baillie, the Scottish poet, dramatist and philanthropist, and of Maria Edgeworth, who was also a novelist, essayist and educationalist.

Reviewing Elizabeth’s work, perhaps its most striking feature is its range and variety: fiction, satire, comic sketches, philosophical essays, historical biography and educational theory.

Elizabeth experienced poor health in the 1790s and suffered her first attack of gout, the first of many, in 1800. She moved to England and died on July 23 1816 in the Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate after a brief illness.

There is a three-quarter length portrait of Elizabeth Hamilton by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), which is striking evidence of her status in the cultural life of Scotland, in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

It is unfortunate that she is so comprehensively overlooked and forgotten in her native city, underscoring the truth of Jesus’ observation in Mark 6:4: ‘A prophet is not without honour save in his own country.’