She had two surviving siblings; an older brother, James, the heir presumptive to the baronetcy, and a younger sister, Mary.
[4] Her father was an acquaintance of Samuel Johnson, John Boswell and Sir Walter Scott.
[1] In 1808, she donated two shells brought by her father from India to the University of St Andrews,[5] as a result of which she received borrowing rights to the University Library, and evidence of her reading life in St Andrews began.
In 1820, she borrowed ninety-eight books, often returning multiple times in a week to fetch more volumes.
[6] Elizabeth Foulis died in 1827, at the age of eighty-one, and bequeathed her collection of 46 rare books[7] to the St Andrews University Library, many of which are still held in the University Collections.