Lady Caroline Blackwood

Journalist, Author

1931 – 1996

85

Who was Lady Caroline Blackwood?

The Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood was a writer and artist's muse, and the eldest child of the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness.

A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Caroline Blackwood was equally well known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood.

She was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, her parents' London home. She was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at Rockport School in County Down, at Brilliantmont in Lausanne, and at Downham in Essex. After a finishing school in Oxford she was presented as a debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House. Plump, ungainly and lacking in confidence as a teenager, she soon blossomed into a captivating blonde beauty with startlingly large blue eyes.

We need you!

Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!

Born
Jul 16, 1931
London
Also known as
  • The Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • United Kingdom
Profession
Lived in
  • London
  • New York City
Died
Feb 14, 1996
New York City

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Lady Caroline Blackwood." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/caroline_blackwood>.

Discuss this Lady Caroline Blackwood biography with the community:

0 Comments

    Browse Biographies.net