Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aust, Sarah
AUST, SARAH (1744–1811), topographical writer, is known as an authoress by the name of 'The Hon. Mrs. Murray, of Kensington.' Her first husband was the Hon. William Murray, brother of the Earl of Dunmore; but after his death, in 1786, she married, for the second time, Mr. George Aust. She died at the age of sixty-seven, at Noel House, Kensington, on 5 Nov, 1811. Mrs. Aust published in 1799 'A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland, to the Lakes of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, and to the Curiosities in the District of Craven, in the West Riding of Yorkshire; to which is added a more particular Description of Scotland, especially that part of it called the Highlands.' The book is written in a lively style, and gives a graphic picture of the modes of locomotion of the time, besides sketching in some detail the social condition of the northern peasantry. A second edition, in which greater attention was paid to the Hebrides and the islands round Scotland, appeared in 1803, and a third in 1810. In the latter an appendix treated 'of the new roads in Scotland, and of a beautiful cavern lately discovered in the Isle of Skye.'
[Gent. Mag. lxxxi. part ii. 586; Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica.]