Grace Jane Wallace, Lady Wallace (née Stein formerly Lady Don; 1804 – 13 March 1878) was a Scottish author.Antonella Braida, Wallace, Grace Jane, Lady Wallace (1804–1878), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 18 March 2017.
Early life Grace Jane Stein was born in 1804 as the eldest daughter of John Stein, an Edinburgh banker and distiller who served as MP for Bletchingley.
Career Lady Wallace "built a career and reputation for herself through her work as a translator, in particular with her translations of the lives and letters of contemporary musicians for Longman's, which remained the standard English versions for generations."
Personal life On 19 August 1824, she married, as his second wife, Sir Alexander Don, 6th Baronet of Newton Don, who was a close friend of Sir Walter Scott. Before his death on11 March 1826, they were the parents of two children:
Sir William Henry Don, 7th Baronet (1825–1862), the actor who married twice. Alexina Harriet Don (–1919), who married Sir Frederick Acclom Milbank, 1st Baronet, a grandson of the 1st Duke of Cleveland.
In his Familiar Letters (ii.348) Sir Walter Scott writes to his son in 1825: "Mama and Anne are quite well; they are with me on a visit to Sir Alex. Don and his new lady, who is a very pleasant woman, and plays on the harp delightfully".
After Sir Alexander died in 1826; Grace married Lt.-Gen. Sir James Maxwell Wallace (1785–1867) in 1836. Lady Wallace died on 12 March 1878 without children from her second marriage.
Works Lady Wallace long and actively pursued a career as a translator of German and Spanish works, among others: The Princess Ilse (by Marie Petersen), 1855 Clara; or Slave-life in Europe (by Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer), 1856 Voices from the Greenwood, 1856 The Old Monastery (by Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer), 1857 Frederick the Great and his Merchant (by Luise Mühlbach), 1859 Schiller's Life and Works (by Emil Palleske), 1859 The Castle and the Cottage in Spain (from the Spanish of Fernán Caballero), 1861 Joseph in the Snow (by Berthold Auerbach), 1861 Mendelssohn's Letters from Italy and Switzerland, 1862 Will-o'-the-Wisp (by Marie Petersen), 1862 Letters of Mendelssohn from 1833 to 1847, 1863 Letters of Mozart, 1865 Beethoven's Letters, 1790–1826, 1866 Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 1867 Reminiscences of Mendelssohn (by Elise Polko), 1868 Alexandra Feodorowna (by August Theodor von Grimm), 1870 A German Peasant Romance: Elsa and the Vulture (by Wilhelmine von Hillern), 1876 Life of Mozart (by Ludwig Nohl), 1877.
Notes
References Attribution . Endnotes Grove's Dict. of Music, vol. iv.; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Brit. Mus. Cat.; "Record of the 5th Dragoon Guards"; The Times, 7 Feb. 1867; Rogers's Book of Wallace (Grampian Club), i. 110–12; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 1860.
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