Elizabeth Burnett

Elizabeth Burnett (1766 – 17 June 1790) was the younger daughter of the Scottish judge and philosopher James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, and a famous Edinburgh beauty of the late 18th century.

She is remembered as the young woman who is celebrated by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in his "Address to Edinburgh" (1786) and his "Elegy on The Late Miss Burnet of Monboddo" (1791), which Burns wrote after her early death from consumption (tuberculosis) at the age of 24.[1]

The National Gallery of Scotland includes a drawing of Miss Elizabeth Burnett. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/6807/miss-elizabeth-burnett-1766-1790-daughter-lord-monboddo

  1. ^ Iain Maxwell Hammett, "Burnett, James, Lord Monboddo (bap. 1714, d. 1799)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4074 accessed 30 August 2013.