Lucy Bethia Walford

Lucy Bethia (Colquhoun) Walford (17 April 1845 – 11 May 1915) was a Scottish novelist and artist, who wrote 45 books, the majority of them "light-hearted domestic comedies". Accurate writing was a big consideration for her.

Life

Walford was born Lucy Bethia Colquhoun on 17 April 1845 at Portobello, a seaside resort then outside Edinburgh, the seventh child of Frances Sarah Fuller Maitland (1813–1877), a poet and hymn writer and John Colquhoun (1805–1885) of Luss, Dunbartonshire, author of The Moor and the Loch. Her paternal grandmother, Janet Colquhoun (1781–1846), was a religious writer, and her aunt, Catherine Sinclair (1800–1864) was a prolific novelist and children's writer.

Walford was educated privately by German governesses. Her reading included works by Charlotte Mary Yonge and Susan Ferrier, and in later years Jane Austen. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1855, where guests included the artist Noël Paton, who encouraged her to take up painting. In 1868 and several succeeding years she exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy. Her first short piece of writing appeared in the Sunday Magazine in May 1869.

On 23 June 1869 she married Alfred Saunders Walford (died 1907), a magistrate of Ilford, Essex, and they moved to London. They had five daughters and two sons. Their children were said to be "never put aside for her work" and "constantly with their mother". She died on 11 May 1915 at her home in Pimlico, London.

Partial bibliography

Fiction: