Anna Masterton Buchan, younger sister to the statesman and prolific novelist John Buchan, crafted humorous domestic fiction that centers on the lives of Scottish families. Her works offer a warm perspective on their daily joys and challenges, characterized by a distinctive style that resonated with readers through its gentle humor and insight into human nature. Beginning her writing career in 1911, she published twelve novels and a personal memoir of her brother, further cementing her literary legacy.
The House That Is Our Own is one of the "Priorsford" novels which are on the whole follow small town lives in Scotland across the 1920's and 30's and were written by Anna Buchan (1877–1948) who published her books under the name O. Douglas. This novel, written in 1940 focuses on the lives of two friends, Kitty Baillie and Isobel Logan.
Beatrice is a timid, private, and restless young woman from an upper middle class Glasgow family. Her mother's death leaves her an orphan with no close relatives. In months following her mother's death, Beatrice struggles to find a new place for herself. Comes Christmas, Beatrice doesn't feel welcomed at her half-brother's family she considers snobbish, so she chooses to spend holidays with a friendly country family. Having finally found a place she can feel comfortable and be herself, Beatrice builds her confidence and makes new friends.
This book is a sequel to an earlier novel, The Proper Place, concerning an aristocratic Scottish family, the Rutherfurds, forced by circumstances to sell the family estate. Lady Jane has lost both of her sons in the recent Great War; the subsequent death of her husband and unexpected financial hardship prompts her one remaining child, a daughter, Nicole, to suggest their removal to a smaller establishment more within their new means. Accompanying them is Lady Jane's niece, Barbara, but she has married and is back at Rutherfurd Hall at the opening of Small Things, leaving Lady Jane and Nicole in their new home, Harbour House, close by the sea's edge in the fictional east coast town of Kirkmeikle.