Annie Shepherd Swan
| Annie S. Swan CBE | |
|---|---|
Annie Swan in April 1905
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| Born | Annie Shepherd Swan 8 July 1859 Mountskip, Gorebridge, Scotland |
| Died | 17 June 1943 (aged 83) Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland |
| Pen name | Annie S. Swan, Annie S. Smith, David Lyall, Mrs Burnett-Smith |
| Occupation | Writer, novelist, journalist |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Genre | Fiction, dramatic fiction, romantic fiction, non-fiction, advice, feminism, politics, religion, social commentary |
| Notable works | Aldersyde (1884) |
| Spouse | James Burnett Smith (1883–1927) |
Annie Shepherd Swan (8 July 1859 – 17 June 1943) was a Scottish journalist, novelist and story writer. She used her maiden name for most of her literary career, but also wrote as David Lyall and later Mrs Burnett Smith. She was a popular writer of romantic fiction for young women during the Victorian era and published more than 200 novels, serials, short stories and other fiction between 1878 and her death in 1943.
Swan was one of the seven children of Edward Swan (died 1893), a farmer and merchant, by his first wife, Euphemia Brown (died 1881). After her father's business failed, she attended school in Edinburgh, latterly at the Queen Street Ladies College. Her father belonged to an Evangelical Union congregation, but she turned in adulthood to the Church of Scotland. She persistently wrote fiction as a teenager.
Her first publication was Wrongs Righted (1881) which appeared as a serial in the People's Friend. This periodical she long saw as the mainstay of her career, although she contributed to many others.
The novel that made her reputation was Aldersyde (1883), a romance set in the Scottish Borders, which was favourably reviewed. Swan received an autographed letter of appreciation from Lord Tennyson, while the prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone wrote in a letter to The Scotsman that he thought it as "beautiful as a work of art" for its "truly living sketches of Scottish character".
Later successes included The Gates of Eden (1887) and Maitland of Lauriston (1891). These owed a debt to the fiction of Margaret Oliphant, who was among her critics, accusing Swan's novels of presenting a stereotypical, unrealistic depiction of Scotland. In a review of Carlowrie (1884), Oliphant went so far as to say Swan "presented an entirely distorted view of Scottish life." Because of her dominance over Women at Home, editor-in-chief W.R. Nicoll often called it Annie Swan's Magazine. She later became editor of the magazine from 1893 to 1917. While writing for the British Weekly, she became acquainted with S. R. Crockett and J. M. Barrie, whose work like hers was given the unflattering epithet kailyard, an allusion to its parochialism and sentimentality.
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