‘Cultural Jacobitism’ and the Writing of Anne Grant (1755-1838)

This thesis has two principal aims. The first is to continue and develop recent work recuperating the writing of Anne MacVicar Grant (1755-1838). (Perkins 2022; McNeil 2020). My second, and related aim is to frame both Grant’s writing and personal identity as an expression of a philosophy that I have termed ‘Cultural Jacobitism’. Cultural Jacobitism is defined by the thesis as distinguishable from both the political and dynastic struggle leading up to 1746, which had been largely confined to history in Grant’s lifetime because of the failed insurrection. It also differs from the sentimental and nostalgic strain of Jacobitism that emerged after 1746, in the work of Walter Scott and others in that where such a conventional history often represented the inevitability of Jacobitism’s demise, Grant offers an alternative interpretation of history that both recuperates and retains certain ideological and cultural elements. While such elements were deemed retrograde and discarded in the wake of the Enlightenment, Grant presents them as a remedy for many of the issues impacting her contemporary modern world. The thesis necessarily investigates Grant’s contemporary popularity and success as an author, as a peer of Scott and other writers of her milieu. It also addresses the subsequent decline of her reputation and neglect in literary history, and builds on recent scholarly articles, chapters, and editions that have begun to redress this neglect (Shields 2012; Hagglund 2017) .The absence of a modern critical monograph on Grant’s oeuvre as a whole belies both the extent of her influence and the importance of her interventions in Enlightenment discourse during the early nineteenth century. This thesis aims to address this absence, not only by exploring Grant’s published works but also by making use of various unpublished manuscripts. Conveying her experiences through different literary genres, Grant’s writing not only straddles generic forms but invites inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches between literary studies, history, and social sciences. I also suggest that even within modern efforts of the recuperation of women writers of the long nineteenth century, Grant’s relative marginalisation highlights how she operated outside of conventional classifications of identity. An important part of Grant’s authorial identity is the combination of lived experience of both the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands and her childhood in proximity to various marginalised, indigenous and colonial antebellum communities in America. The thesis demonstrates the importance of Grant’s anthropological approach to the merits and vulnerabilities of the societies she observed, and how it was focused through the strengths and insecurities of her own identity. In summary, through an exploration of Grant’s complex orientation towards issues such as nationality and nationalism, politics, gender, and religion, and the consolidation of these issues under the concept of Cultural Jacobitism, I offer an overall reconsideration of how her literary identity and oeuvre can be understood.