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A Daughter of Fife
This Elibron Classics edition is a reprint of a 1886 edition by Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.
154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1886
About the author
Amelia E. Barr
125 books10 followersAmelia Edith Barr, née Huddleston, was an English American novelist. (See also under Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr.)
In 1850 she married William Barr, and four years later they immigrated to the United States and settled in Galveston, Texas where her husband and three of their six children died of yellow fever in 1867. With her three remaining daughters, Mrs. Barr moved to Ridgewood,New Jersey in 1868. She came there to tutor the three sons of a prominent citizen, William Libby, and opened a school in a small house. This structure still stands at the southwest corner of Van Dien and Linwood Avenues.
Amelia Barr did not like Ridgewood and did not remain there for very long. She left shortly after selling a story to a magazine.[Caldwell,William A.,et al.,"The History of a Village, Ridgewood,N.J.," State Tercentenary Committee, c. 1964, p. 32] In 1869, she moved to New York City where she began to write for religious periodicals and to publish a series of semi-historical tales and novels.
By 1891, when she achieved greater success, she and her daughters moved up the Hudson River to Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where they renovated a house on the slopes of Storm King Mountain and named it Cherry Croft. The name has been applied to that period of her career, the most productive and successful. She remained there until moving in with her daughter Lilly in White Plains in her last years.
In 1850 she married William Barr, and four years later they immigrated to the United States and settled in Galveston, Texas where her husband and three of their six children died of yellow fever in 1867. With her three remaining daughters, Mrs. Barr moved to Ridgewood,New Jersey in 1868. She came there to tutor the three sons of a prominent citizen, William Libby, and opened a school in a small house. This structure still stands at the southwest corner of Van Dien and Linwood Avenues.
Amelia Barr did not like Ridgewood and did not remain there for very long. She left shortly after selling a story to a magazine.[Caldwell,William A.,et al.,"The History of a Village, Ridgewood,N.J.," State Tercentenary Committee, c. 1964, p. 32] In 1869, she moved to New York City where she began to write for religious periodicals and to publish a series of semi-historical tales and novels.
By 1891, when she achieved greater success, she and her daughters moved up the Hudson River to Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where they renovated a house on the slopes of Storm King Mountain and named it Cherry Croft. The name has been applied to that period of her career, the most productive and successful. She remained there until moving in with her daughter Lilly in White Plains in her last years.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 9, 2015
To the remote Fife fishing village of Pittenloch comes Allan Campbell, a young aristocrat in conflict with his father after refusing to marry his cousin, only to meet and fall in love with a fisher-girl who has just lost her father and three brothers to the sea.
Maggie Promoter is the girl in question, tall and beautiful, but not the sort of bride a man of money should be looking for. As the local gossip's say, '"not once in a generation did a fisher-girl marry "out of the boats"', and Allan's father sends him out of the country for two years to forget her, leading to an unlikely alliance between Maggie and Allan's cousin, the approved intended, Mary Campbell.
This is a gentle romance, untroubled by any undue tension, very plainly written with some pleasing Scotch dialogue from the Pittenloch folk and a pleasing lack of melodrama from the author, but hardly more than mildly diverting.
Barr furnishes her simple tale with plenty of unattributed quotations from Scottish poets from the 19th century and before, such as Alexander Smith, Arthur Hugh Clough, Scott and, of course, Burns.
Tracing those was as much fun as reading the romance itself.
Maggie Promoter is the girl in question, tall and beautiful, but not the sort of bride a man of money should be looking for. As the local gossip's say, '"not once in a generation did a fisher-girl marry "out of the boats"', and Allan's father sends him out of the country for two years to forget her, leading to an unlikely alliance between Maggie and Allan's cousin, the approved intended, Mary Campbell.
This is a gentle romance, untroubled by any undue tension, very plainly written with some pleasing Scotch dialogue from the Pittenloch folk and a pleasing lack of melodrama from the author, but hardly more than mildly diverting.
Barr furnishes her simple tale with plenty of unattributed quotations from Scottish poets from the 19th century and before, such as Alexander Smith, Arthur Hugh Clough, Scott and, of course, Burns.
Tracing those was as much fun as reading the romance itself.
December 28, 2015
A delightful story set in Victorian Scotland. Maggie Promoter has just lost her father and three brothers to the sea and is left alone with her last remaining family, her brother David, who has an ambition to become a Free Kirk preacher. They let a room to Allan Campbell, a young man new to the fishing-village, as David follows the minister's advice to work for a year before going to school.
It is full of descriptions of Maggie's life in the village and, through other POV characters, Glasgow, in the late 1800s. It shares an interesting view of the harsh theology of the reverends of the day and, in contrast, Maggie's simple faith and great soul, pure enough to be unmarred by trouble and harshness alike.
Now I wish upon everyone a friend as good as Maggie is to Mary!
It is full of descriptions of Maggie's life in the village and, through other POV characters, Glasgow, in the late 1800s. It shares an interesting view of the harsh theology of the reverends of the day and, in contrast, Maggie's simple faith and great soul, pure enough to be unmarred by trouble and harshness alike.
Now I wish upon everyone a friend as good as Maggie is to Mary!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews