Grizel Erskine d. by 1753

Grizel ERSKINE or ARESKINE d. by 1753

Biographical Note

Grisel Grierson was the only child and heiress of the landowner John Grierson of Barjarg, Dumfriesshire. She married Charles Erskine or Areskine in 1712. He was a lawyer who became a judge as Lord Tinwald in 1744. By him she had at least seven children. The date of her death is unknown but must have been 1753 at the latest, as her husband remarried in that year.

Books

Her husband had an extensive library, but Grisel clearly had a separate collection of books which was listed in a notebook dated 29 August 1729, in the same hand as the catalogue of her husband’s collection, which was compiled two years later. It gives brief details of individual items, including imprint data. Comprising 168 items, the largest component (56%) was of theological material, including items of devotion and on good conduct and personal morality. Language, literature and music comprised 28% of the collection, and included French and English plays and operas, including items relating to Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels of 1726 is also present. History, politics and geography comprised 11% of the collection, and the rest of her library covered such subjects as cooking and medicine. There were few items in Latin. An annotated edition of this catalogue, with an introduction, was published in 2004.

None of her copies has been identified, and it is not known where they were kept, although her husband bought the Tinwald estate, near Dumfries, and had a house there designed by William Adam between 1738 and 1740. On the other hand, she may have kept them in her Edinburgh residence. As the owner had a good number of years left to live after the list was compiled she probably acquired many further books, details of which are unknown, apart from five titles added later to the 1729 listing.

Sources

• ‘Catalogue of Books belonging to Mistris Areskine of Barjarg, 29th August 1729’, National Library of Scotland MS.5161, ff. 17-27 [folios 22-23 and 25-27 are blank].
• Simpson, Murray C.T., ‘A Woman’s Library in 1729: Grisel Erskine’, in Brown, Stephen W. and McDougall, Warren, The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion, 1707-1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 447-458.
• Information from Murray Simpson.