Gordon Lucie

Gordon, Lucie, Lady Duff, the only child of John Austin, the jurist, and of his gifted wife, was born in 1821. As a child she accompanied her parents abroad, and thus became a finished French and German scholar, and a friend of Heine. At the age of eighteen she published a translation of Niebuhr's Greek Legends, and in 1840 married Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. Inheriting her father's delicate constitution, she was obliged to take a sea voyage, which led to the publication in 1862-64 of her charming Letters from the Cape. Still more delightful are her Letters from Egypt, which appeared in 1865. She died at Cairo in 1869. Among her other works, chiefly translations, are The Amber Witch, The French in Algiers, The House of Brandenburg, Remarkable Criminal Trials, and Sketches of German Life, in the last of which her husband took a share.