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178:'s account of her is something of a reaction to the "queasy sensations" caused by Brown's sentimentality: "She was made out of thunder-storms and sunshine, and not even her little perfunctory pieties and shop-made holinesses could squelch her spirits or put out her fires for long... and this tainted butter soon gets to be as delicious to the reader as are the stunning and worldly sincerities around it every time her pen takes a fresh breath."
205:." This literary bent is apparent also in the sometimes pithy comments in the journals and in her valiant attempts to write in rhyming couplets. Two of her verses are longer pieces probably inspired by history lessons: "The Life of Mary Queen of Scots by M. F." and "The Life of the King Jamess", dealing briefly with the first five Scottish kings of that name.
208:"Marjorie" is a spelling popularized by her later editors. "Marjory" was the spelling used by the Fleming family. Her familiar names included Madgie, Maidie, Muff and Muffy, but Pet is not recorded before the appearance of Farnie's account of her. Nonetheless, "'Pet Marjorie' is now carved on her (modern) tombstone in Abbotshall Kirkyard at Kirkcaldy."
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The diary includes a wide variety of observations: "The Monkey gets as many visitors as I or my cousins." "I like to here my own sex praised but not the other." "I never read
Sermons of any kind but I read Novelettes and my bible." Fleming is notable for a diary that she kept for the last 18 months
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MD of
Edinburgh. He acknowledged a debt to Marjorie's younger sister Elizabeth Fleming (1809–1881) for the loan of the letters and journals. He included twice as much as Farnie from the latter, as well as 100 lines of her verse. The direct, albeit sole evidence of Scott's interest appears in a long
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The life and writings of
Marjorie Fleming became hugely popular in the Victorian period, although the editions published were severely truncated and re-worked, as some of her language was thought inappropriate for an eight-year-old to use. Even Lachlan Macbean's editions of 1904 and 1928 relied on
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for the 1934 facsimile edition and followed by
Sidgwick, is the reverse of the one found in earlier editions. The original orthography is retained here.</ref> Her copybooks begin with a somewhat startling, laconic tribute to Isabella Keith: "Many people are hanged for Highway robbery
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Marjorie spent most of her sixth, seventh and eighth years in
Edinburgh under the tutelage of a cousin, Isabella Keith, who was about 17. Isabella married in 1824 James Wilson (1795–1856), the zoologist brother of the writer
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are now kept in the
National Library of Scotland. However, for fifty years after her death they remained unpublished. The first account of her, with long extracts from the journals, was given by a London journalist,
60:), also the name of her elder sister and of her cousin and friend Miss Crauford (variously spelled). Her uncle Thomas Fleming was minister of Kirkcaldy parish church. Her mother's relations were acquainted in
215:. Johnson says that as Marjorie continued to write under the tutelage of her cousin, she "discovered that every writer has a critic shadowing her shoulder. The drama of her journals is watching who won."
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at present on every side." She herself contracted measles in
November and apparently recovered, but then died, of what was described as "water on the head" and is now considered to have been
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of her life. Diary keeping by children was encouraged in the United
Kingdom throughout the 19th century. (A notable published example from a generation later is that of the English girl
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Marjorie
Fleming's book, the story of Pet Marjorie together with her journals and her letters, to which is added Marjorie Fleming, a story of child-life fifty years ago
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The
Sidgwick edition of 1934, which followed a facsimile edition of the same year, cites two other famous literary admirers. On the dust jacket,
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Housebreking Murder &c. &c. Isabella teaches me everything I know and I am much indebted to her she is learnen witty & sensible."
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Marjorie returned to Kirkcaldy in July 1811, but wrote on 1 September in a letter to Isabella Keith, "We are surrounded with
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The monument marking her grave, south of the old parish church in Kirkcaldy, was not erected until 1930. It was designed by
32:(also spelt Marjory; 15 January 1803 – 19 December 1811) was a Scottish child writer and poet. She gained appreciation from
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is quoted as saying, "Marjory Fleming was possibly – no, I take back possibly – she was one of the noblest works of God."
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Marjorie's life and the legend that formed around her writings is analysed in the first chapter of Alexandra Johnson's
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Portrait of Marjorie Fleming during her last illness. From a water-colour drawing, probably by Miss Isa Keith, 1811.
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Marjory's "appetite for books" is noted, among others, by Kathryn Sunderland in her entry for the
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The rumour that Marjorie's poems were admired by Walter Scott derives from an 1863 article in the
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A picture of the 1930 monument in Abbotshall Kirkyard, with a close-up of the inscription:
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288:(London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1934). This was re-edited and reissued in 1999 as
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The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (London: Batsford, 1990), pp. 367–368.
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National Library of Scotland. Marjory Fleming Papers digital scholarship dataset
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in 1898, claimed that "no more fascinating infantile author has ever appeared."
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Transkribus Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) edition of Marjory Fleming
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Quoted in Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds.,
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National Library of Scotland. Marjory Fleming Papers (MSS.1096-1100)
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Papers of the late Charles D'Orville (Pilkington Jackson) NLS 7445
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The Complete Marjory Fleming, her Journals, Letters & Verses
197:'s 'misteris of udolpho', the Newgate calendar, and 'tails' by
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Fleming was also the subject of a fictionalized biography by
400:, p. xvii. The monument, erected in 1930, is depicted here:
435:(London: Faber, 1946, rep. London: Persephone, 2000).
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Pet Marjorie: a Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago.
375:Retrieved 21 February 2012. Subscription required.
421:The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life
213:The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life
102:The order of the three copybooks established by
269:. Vol. 19. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
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76:, and had two children. She died in 1837.
242:(1904) by Macbean, Lachlan; Brown, John.
471:A sketch of Marjorie by Isabella Keith:
570:Neurological disease deaths in Scotland
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183:Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
360:"Marjorie Fleming, the Wonder-Child",
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185:: "She records enjoying the poems of
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170:The Dictionary of National Biography
535:19th-century Scottish women writers
458:Works by or about Marjorie Fleming
373:ODNB entry for "Marjory Fleming":
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483:Plaques to Marjorie in Kirkaldy:
284:Frank Sidgwick's introduction to
16:Scottish child writer (1803–1811)
339:Edinburgh/Kirkcaldy/Cupar, 1858.
266:Dictionary of National Biography
153:letter from Elizabeth to Brown.
388:, pp. 135 and 149 respectively.
525:19th-century Scottish diarists
168:, in the entry he gave her in
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530:19th-century Scottish poets
473:Retrieved 21 February 2012.
402:Retrieved 21 February 2012.
157:earlier bowdlerized texts.
120:manuscripts of her writings
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485:Retrieved 21 February 2012
479:Retrieved 21 February 2012
443:. French translation 2002.
260:"Fleming, Margaret"
467:Trivia Library biography
560:British women diarists
555:Scottish women writers
545:Deaths from meningitis
193:, the Arabian Nights,
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176:Mark Twain
150:John Brown
85:meningitis
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62:Edinburgh
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