Lydia Miller

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller or Harriet Myrtle (1812 – 11 March 1876) was a Scottish children's writer.

Biography She was born Lydia Mackenzie Falconer to Elizabeth Lydia McLeod (d. 1865), a schoolteacher, and her husband, an Inverness-based merchant, William Fraser (1789–1828). She was baptised in 1812. After her father's business failed her mother's family helped pay for her education. It was unsuccessful but considered a brave attempt to write fiction from an evangelical perspective at a time when most Scottish evangelical Presbyterians considered the fiction to be corrupting and intrinsically immoral.

Her husband, unwell and depressed, possibly fearful of insanity, shot himself at their home in Edinburgh on 24 December 1856. Their daughter, the poet and novelist was said to have been affected by this the rest of her life. She completed the publication of her husband's unfinished works, and assisted Peter Bayne write her husband's biography. In widowhood, she was financially assisted by a civil list pension that was given to her in 1857.

Lydia Miller died on 11 March 1876, at her son-in-law's manse at Lochinver, Sutherland, and was buried on 20 March beside her husband in the Grange cemetery in Edinburgh.

Adventure of a Kite The water lily Passages in the life of an English heiress : or, Recollections of disruption times in Scotland. (1847) Two dear friends The duck house Home and its pleasures : simple stories for young people Bertha and the bird Little Amy's birthday Going to the cottage A story-book of country scenes The little foundling : and other tales The man of snow and other tales Amusing tales for young people A story book of the seasons: Spring