Clifford, Lucy

• Clifford, Mrs. W.K.
• Inglis, John
• Lane, Sophia Lucy Jane

(from Wikipedia and ODNB entries)

Lucy Clifford (2 August 1846 – 21 April 1929) was born Lucy Lane in London, the daughter of John Lane and Louisa Ellen, née Gaspey (d. 1901) of Barbados. She married the mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford in 1875. After his death in 1879, she earned a prominent place in English literary life as a novelist, and later as a dramatist. Her best-known story, Mrs Keith's Crime (1885), was followed by several other volumes, such as Aunt Anne (1892). She also wrote The Last Touches and Other Stories (1892) and Mere Stories (1896); and a play, A Woman Alone (1898). She is perhaps most often remembered, however, as the author of The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise (1882), a collection of stories written for her children.

W. K. Clifford renounced his father's inheritance to the benefit of the latter's second, much younger family. He could not have foreseen that he was to fall ill and die quite soon after this gesture, leaving his wife and two small daughters almost penniless. Clifford's friends organized a testimonial fund which helped the young widow for a short while but she soon decided to take matters into her own hands, resuming her career as a writer and continuing the salon which had enjoyed such a distinctive reputation during her marriage. Regular visitors of Clifford's at-homes were Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock, John Collier, Frederick Macmillan, and, for a while, the controversial ‘Vernon Lee’ (Violet Paget). At this time Henry James became one of Lucy Clifford's most prized friends, and their correspondence was extensive.

For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Clifford and http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/article/57699 .

Created 2015-10-28 by Anna St.Onge.

• English

• Latin

http://viaf.org/viaf/41971243 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Clifford http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F65357
Marysa Demoor, ‘Clifford , (Sophia) Lucy Jane (1846–1929)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/article/57699, accessed 15 Feb 2016]