Gertrude Campbell [Lady Colin Campbell]

Life
1861-1911 [Gertrude Elizabeth, Née Blood; early pseud ‘G. E. Brunefill’]; b. Clare; ed. in Italy and France; at fifteen wrote Topo (1876), a children’s story ill. by Kate Greenaway; m. Lord Colin Campbell, younger son of Duke of Argyll, 1881; legally separated on plea of cruelty; appt. art critic for World; wrote Darell Blake (1889), a society novel based on her marital experience; also issued The Book of the Running Brook (1886), on fresh-water fishing. JMC DIW SUTH OCIL

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Notes
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), calls with her sole novel Darell Blake: A Study (1889) a ‘society novel’, drawing on publicity of her court case; considerable naive power; Darell, London ed. and radical MP, married to long-suffering Victoria, is led astray by Lady Alma Vereker, at Homberg; wife dies in childbirth, and hero survives a wreck; Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), selects ‘A Modern Aegeria’ from Darell Blake. See also Irish Book Lover, 3.

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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)