Author: Rose Constance Sutcliffe
Author: Rose Constance Sutcliffe (1853–1929)
Alternate Name(s): C. R. Eaglestone (pseudonym); Leighton Leigh (pseudonym); Marriott (married name)
Biography: Rose Constance Sutcliffe was born in 1853 in Cheshire, the daughter of cotton merchant Joseph Sutcliffe. At an early age, she became a teacher in Lancashire and Surrey before working as a governess. During this period, she wrote two novels, The Siege of Constantinople 1453 (1878) and A Girl-Artist (1885), under the pseudonym "C. R. Eaglestone." (It appears she later disclaimed these novels.) In the 1890s, she became a popular poet with one of her poems "If Thou Wert Blind" becoming an internationally famous song. She wrote a third novel Our Lady of the Ice (1901) under her legal name and a fourth under the pseudonym "Leighton Leigh." Late in life, she married Herbert Philip Fitzgerald Marriott in 1909 but the marriage must have been unhappy since they did not live together two years later in the census. A long-time resident of Hampstead, Sutcliffe died on 12 May 1929 at her home there. An obituary called her "a vital force" in the neighborhood.
Author Tags:
References: British Census (1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1911); Hampstead News (16 May 1929); Probate
Fiction Titles:
- The Siege of Constantinople 1453: An Historical Romance. 1 vol. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1878.
- A Girl-Artist. 1 vol. London: London Literary Society, 1885.
- Our Lady of the Ice: A Story of the Alps. 1 vol. London: Greening and Co., 1901.