Marjorie Fleming

[3] Marjorie spent most of her sixth, seventh and eighth years in Edinburgh under the tutelage of a cousin, Isabella Keith, who was about 17.

[3] Marjorie returned to Kirkcaldy in July 1811, but wrote on 1 September in a letter to Isabella Keith, "We are surrounded with measles at present on every side.

The first account of her, with long extracts from the journals, was given by a London journalist, H. B. Farnie, in the Fife Herald, and then reprinted as a booklet entitled Pet Marjorie: a Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago.

[9] The rumour that Marjorie's poems were admired by Walter Scott derives from an 1863 article in the North British Review by Dr John Brown MD of Edinburgh.

[10] 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.

Leslie Stephen, in the entry he gave her in The Dictionary of National Biography in 1898, claimed that "no more fascinating infantile author has ever appeared."

Mark Twain'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.

"[11] Marjory's "appetite for books" is noted, among others, by Kathryn Sunderland in her entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "She records enjoying the poems of Pope and Gray, the Arabian Nights, Ann Radcliffe's 'misteris [sic] of udolpho', the Newgate calendar, and 'tails' by Maria Edgeworth and Hannah More.

Her familiar names included Madgie, Maidie, Muff and Muffy, but Pet is not recorded before the appearance of Farnie's account of her.