Lady Anne Barnard

Lady Anne Barnard (née Lindsay; 8 December 1750 – 6 May 1825) was a Scottish travel writer, artist and socialite, and the author of the ballad Auld Robin Gray.

[3] Her letters written to Melville, then secretary for war and the colonies, and her diaries of travels into the interior have become an important source of information about the people, events and social life of the time.

She is also retained in popular memory as a socialite, known for entertaining at the Castle of Good Hope as the official hostess of Earl Macartney.

The remarkable series of letters, journals and drawings she produced was published in 1901 under the title South Africa a Century Ago.

It was published anonymously in 1783, Lady Anne only acknowledging the authorship of the words two years before her death in a letter to Sir Walter Scott (1823), who subsequently edited it for the Bannatyne Club with two continuations.

From Historic Houses of South Africa by Dorothea Fairbridge
An example of a drawing, of "Paradise", her South African residence
An example of her oil work, believed to depict Raby Castle in the County Palatine of Durham, seat of the Lords Barnard