Elizabeth Rigby

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As an art historian, journalist, and public figure, ER played a major role in shaping modern art criticism. Many of her publications introduced readers and artists to new influences from German art, while others confirmed the importance of the Italian masters. Through her literary and art-history reviews, she influenced Victorian public taste. Produced over a span of sixty years, her work includes travel writing, short stories, essays, and three translations. She was also a talented editor.
Broomfield, Andrea, and Sally Mitchell, editors. Prose by Victorian Women. Garland, 1996.
77-80
  • BirthName: Elizabeth Rigby
  • Married: Eastlake
    ER was Mrs Eastlake only for a year and a half before she became Lady Eastlake when her husband was knighted.
  • Pseudonyms: The Author of Letters from the Baltic; The Author of Baltic Letters
  • Titled: Lady
Black and white photograph of Elizabeth Rigby, seated, with her hands clasped in her lap. She is wearing a simple light dress with a long, full skirt, and a dark scarf wrapped around her shoulders. She is wearing small dark gloves with white trim at the wrists, and her dark hair is pulled back, with a braid pulled across the top of her head and another braid wrapped at the side of head.

Milestones

17 November 1809

ER was born at Norwich.
Rigby, Elizabeth. “Preface and Memoirs”. Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, edited by Charles Eastlake Smith, J. Murray, 1895, p. Various pages.
1: 1

By September 1841

ER anonymously published her travel diary A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic, compiled from a series of letters written to her mother .
Lochhead, Marion C. Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake. John Murray, 1961.
30

January 1893

Ten months before her death, ER (Lady Eastlake) issued her last publication, Reminiscences of Edinburgh Society nearly fifty years ago, in Longman's Magazine as by the author of Letters from the Baltic.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
4: 458

2 October 1893

ER (Lady Eastlake) died in her late eighties in her home at 7 Fitzroy Square, London.
Lochhead, Marion C. Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake. John Murray, 1961.
158
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

17 November 1809

ER was born at Norwich.
Rigby, Elizabeth. “Preface and Memoirs”. Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, edited by Charles Eastlake Smith, J. Murray, 1895, p. Various pages.
1: 1

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