Caroline Blackwood

Caroline Blackwood (born July 16, 1931, Northern Ireland—died Feb. 14, 1996, New York, N.Y., U.S.) was an Irish journalist and novelist whose psychological fiction examines physical and emotional deformity. She was married at different times to the British artist Lucian Freud and the American poet Robert Lowell.

Blackwood, a descendant of the 18th-century dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, lived in Northern Ireland until she was 17. Her first book, For All I Found There (1973), is a collection of short stories and nonfiction, including reminiscences of life in Northern Ireland. Her next work of note, the novel The Stepdaughter (1976), concerns an isolated woman’s obsession with and disapproval of her obese stepdaughter. The stingy misanthropic title character of Great Granny Webster (1977) lives out her miserable life in a crumbling mansion much like Blackwood’s childhood home. The Fate of Mary Rose (1981) uses the form of a mystery to examine distorted, loveless lives. Blackwood’s other works include the short stories of Goodnight Sweet Ladies (1983) and the novels Corrigan (1984) and On the Perimeter (1984), about a British nuclear protest; In the Pink: Caroline Blackwood on Hunting (1987); and, with Anna Haycraft, the popular cookbook Darling You Shouldn’t Have Gone to So Much Trouble (1980). The Last of the Duchess (1995) recounts Blackwood’s attempts to write about the aging, widowed duchess of Windsor.