Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–1869)

Lucie Gordon, née Austin, was born at Westminster, London, the only child of the jurist and legal philosopher John Austin and his wife Sarah Taylor Austin, a writer and translator of works from German. Her parents took her to Germany as a child, where she became fluent in the language. In 1840, she married Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, 3rd baronet, a prominent government official. Lady Duff-Gordon's many friends included the literary elite of Victorian London such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Lord Tennyson, who made her house in Queen Anne’s Gate famous as a center of intellectual society. She published 10 translations of works from the German to help support her family. Later in life, ill-health forced Lady Duff-Gordon to go abroad for a better climate. She went first to South Africa and then settled in Egypt, where she learned Arabic and wrote many letters home with observations of Egyptian culture, religion and customs. Her Egyptian neighbors loved and respected her and gave her the name "Sitteh" (the Lady). Her Letters from Egypt, now considered a classic, was first published in 1865.