author

Ann Fraser Tytler

1783–1857

A Scottish novelist from a literary family, she is best remembered for the popular Leila stories, which begin with a young girl surviving a shipwreck and life on a deserted island. Her books mix adventure, domestic life, and clear moral feeling in a way that made them widely read in the 19th century.

2 Audiobooks

Common Sense for Housemaids

Common Sense for Housemaids

by Ann Fraser Tytler

Leila at Home a continuation of Leila in England

Leila at Home a continuation of Leila in England

by Ann Fraser Tytler

About the author

Ann Fraser Tytler was a Scottish novelist, born around 1783 and died on September 3, 1857. She was the daughter of the judge and historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, and the sister of historian Patrick Fraser Tytler, so writing and scholarship were part of the world she grew up in.

She is best known for Leila; or, The Island (1839), a story about a shipwrecked girl that later continued in Leila in England and Leila at Home. She also wrote Mary and Florence; or, Grave and Gay and Mary and Florence at Sixteen, along with other practical and moral works.

Her fiction belongs to the 19th-century tradition of family reading: lively enough to keep a story moving, but closely interested in character, conduct, and everyday life. Readers coming to her now will find an author who could turn lessons about resilience, duty, and kindness into engaging narrative.