Gordon, LUCIE, LADY DUFF, a clever writer, was the only child of John Austin, the jurist, and of Sarah Taylor, his wife, and was born in London, 24th June 1821. In 1826 she went with her parents to Germany, whence, after two years' stay, she returned, speaking German like her native language. At Boulogne in 1834 she met Heine, an acquaintance renewed with tender pathos twenty years later, when Heine was dying at Paris. In 1840 she became the wife of Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. In 1842 she gave to the world the first of her long series of translations from the German, Niebuhr's Gods and Heroes of Greece. This was followed by the Amber Witch, begun 1843; and the French in Algiers, published 1845; and Feuerbach's Remarkable Criminal Trials, 1846. In 1849, in conjunction with her husband, she translated Ranke's House of
Brandenburg. In 1850 appeared her translation of Wailly's Stella and Vanessa; in 1853 she translated Comtesse d'Arbouville's Village Doctor, and, together with her husband, Ranke's Ferdinand and Maximilian. In the midst of her busy life, alternating between translation work and the choicest society, her health gave way, and she was advised to try the climate of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence, 1861-62, were penned her genial and vivacious Letters from the Cape. After her return to England in 1862 she the same year visited Egypt for the sake of her health. She returned to England, June 1863, but was forced again to retreat to Egypt the same year. She died at Cairo on 14th July 1869, and was buried in the cemetery there. Her Letters from Egypt (1863) and Last Letters from Egypt (1875), observant and bright and cheerful, form perhaps her best contribution to literature. See Janet Ross, Three Generations of Englishwomen (1889).