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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Louisa Ruth Lowe

Author: Louisa Ruth Lowe (1845–1939)

Alternate Name(s): Harris (maiden name)

Biography: Louisa Ruth Lowe (née Harris) was born in 1845 in Bocking, Essex, the daughter of William and Louisa Harris. Her mother died of puerpural fever eleven days after her birth. Consequently, she was adopted by the wealthy industrialist Samuel Courtauld (1793–1881) and his wife Ellen. When Courtauld died in 1881, Lowe inherited his Essex estate of Gosfield Hall and his fortune. In 1865, she married Captain Arthur Swann Howard Lowe (1827–1888). The couple had two sons. Her husband served in the Nottinghamshire Militia (rising to colonel) and studied the sciences, eventually being elected to the Royal Astronomical Society. In his later years, he suffered from mental illness and died after a fall out of a window in 1888. Lowe remarried a few years later to surgeon Thomas Percy Taylor, who subsequently adopted the surname "Lowe." Lowe wrote one novel: Braemar: or, Two Months in the Highlands (1881) about a Scottish lass and her love for her native land. She died in 1939 in her 95th year; her husband followed three months later.

References: British Census (1881, 1891, 1911); Burke; DNB (Samuel Courtauld); Essex Standard (15 July 1893); Ipswich Journal (18 August 1888); London Standard (16 June 1893); pers inf (Linda Kemp, Linda King); Times (24 March 1881, 25 February 1939)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Braemar: or, Two Months in the Highlands.  2 vol.  London: Samuel Tinsley, 1881.