These recollections of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus have been popular since first published in 1898. Elizabeth Grant describes her earliest years in Edinburgh and London, where her father, Sir John Peter Grant, pursued his legal and political ambitions.. She describes the trauma of a broken engagement and her agonies, echoing the problems suffered by her father, as his legal and political ambitions collapsed. Her father is posted to India where she marries Colonel Henry Smith and the following year go to live at Baltiboys, her husband’s newly acquired estate near Dublin which was to be her home for the next half century and where she devoted herself to raising her family.