Louisa Stuart Costello

Louisa Stuart Costello (October 9, 1799 – April 24, 1870), author, was born in Paris, France, near the Seine River (per her death certificate).

She had no true home, but wandered place to place staying with friends and acquaintances. Her brother Dudley Costello (b. 1803 in Sussex d. 1865 from liver failure) drank himself to death after the death of his wife.

She wrote over 100 texts, articles, poems, songs and knew such people as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore. She was a poet, historian, journalist, painter and novelist. Her father was Colonel James Francis Costello, who died in April 1814 while fighting Napoleon.

She did not live chiefly in Paris, in fact she did not return to France until after her mother sent for her in 1815/18 and lived chiefly in Paris, where she was a miniature-painter. In 1815 she published The Maid of the Cyprus Isle, etc.

She also wrote books of travel, which were very popular, as were her novels, chiefly founded on French history. Another work, published in 1835, is Specimens of the Early Poetry of France. She died in Boulogne sur Mer, France of mouth cancer.