Eastlake, Elizabeth (1809–1893)

English writer. Name variations: Lady Elizabeth East-lake. Born Elizabeth Rigby in Norwich, England, on November 17, 1809; died on October 2, 1893; daughter and sister of well-known surgeons; married Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865, an English painter and art critic), in 1849.

After the death of her surgeon father when she was 12, Lady Elizabeth Eastlake lived in Heidelberg with her mother for two years, before returning to England. In 1836, her first article, a criticism of Goethe, was published. From 1842 on, as an art critic and woman of letters, she was a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review, for which she contributed an infamous commentary on Jane Eyre and the Brontës . That same year, she and her mother moved to Edinburgh, where she joined the social circle of critic John Wilson ("Christopher North"). After traveling in Germany and Russia, Eastlake also published A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic (1844).

When she was 40, Eastlake married Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, an eminent painter, and she took to painting during the couple's annual treks to Italy. Following her husband's death in Pisa in 1865, Eastlake edited her husband's work and that of her father; she also translated many works on art and completed the last volume, The History of Our Lord in Art, for Anna Jameson's four-volume series, following Jameson's death.

suggested reading:

Eastlake, Lady. The Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake. Edited by C. Eastlake Smith. 1895.