Lady Caroline Blackwood (bornCaroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood; 16 July 1931 – 14 February 1996) was an English writer, socialite, and muse. Her novels have been praised for their wit and intelligence. One of her works is an autobiography, which detailed her wealthy but unhappy childhood. She was born into an aristocratic British family, the eldest child ofthe 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and ofMaureen Constance Guinness. All three of her husbands were accomplished figures in their own fields.

Lady Caroline Blackwood
Blackwood in 1953
Born	Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (1931-07-16)16 July 1931 London, England
Died	14 February 1996(1996-02-14) (aged 64) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Writer
Years active	1973–1995
Spouses	Lucian Freud ​ ​ (m. 1953; annulled. 1958)​ Israel Citkowitz ​ ​ (m. 1959;div. 1972)​ Robert Lowell ​ ​ (m. 1972; died. 1977)​
Children	4, includingEugenia
Parents	Maureen Constance Guinness Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Relatives	Frederick, 3rd Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (grandfather) Ernest Guinness (grandfather) Aileen Plunket (aunt) Oonagh Guinness (aunt) Gay Kindersley (cousin) Sheridan (brother) Garech Browne (cousin) Tara Browne (cousin) Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (fourth cousin and sister-in-law) Julian Sands (son-in-law)
Family	Guinness

Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood was born on 16 July 1931 at 4 Hans Crescent inKnightsbridge, her parents'London home.^[1] Her parents wereMaureen Constance Guinness andBasil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.

Blackwood was, self-admittedly, "scantily educated" atRockport School inCounty Down andDownham School nearEssex,^[2] among other schools.

In 1949, after afinishing school inOxford, Blackwood was presented as adebutante at a ball held atLondonderry House.^[3]

Blackwood's first job was withHulton Press as a secretary, but she was soon given small reporting jobs byClaud Cockburn. In Paris she metPicasso (and reportedly refused to wash for three days after he drew on her hands and nails).

After marrying artistLucian Freud in 1953, she became a figure in London's bohemian circles, theGargoyle Club andColony Room replacingBelgraviadrawing rooms. She sat for several of Freud's portraits, includingGirl in Bed. She was impressed by the vision of Freud and painterFrancis Bacon, and her later fiction was influenced by their view of humanity.

In the early 1960s, Blackwood began contributing toEncounter,London Magazine, and other periodicals on subjects such asbeatniks,Ulster sectarianism,feminist theatre andNew Yorkfree schools. According toChristopher Isherwood, "she is only capable of thinking negatively. Confronted by a phenomenon, she asks herself: what is wrong with it?"^[4] During the mid-1960s, she had an affair withRobert Silvers, the American founder and co-editor ofThe New York Review of Books.^[5][6]

Her third husband, American poetRobert Lowell, was an influence on her talents as a novelist. He encouraged her to write her first book,For All That I Found There (1973), the title of which is a line from thePercy French song "The Mountains of Mourne". It includes a memoir of her daughter's treatment in a burns unit.

Blackwood published her first novelThe Stepdaughter (1976) three years later, and it received much acclaim. It won theDavid Higham Prize for best first novel.

Great Granny Webster followed in 1977 and was partly derived from her own childhood. It depicted an old woman's destructive impact on her daughter and granddaughter. It was short-listed for the 1977Booker Prize.^[7]

The Last of the Duchess was completed in 1980. A study of the relations between theDuchess of Windsor and her lawyer,Suzanne Blum; it could not be published until after Blum's death in 1995.

Blackwood's third novel,The Fate of Mary Rose (1981), describes the effect on a Kent village of the rape and torture of a ten-year-old girl named Maureen. It is narrated by a historian whose obsessions destroy his domestic life.

After this, she completed a collection of five short stories,Good Night Sweet Ladies (1983). Her final novel,Corrigan (1984), was the least successful of her works.^{[citation needed]}

Blackwood's later books were based on interviews and vignettes, includingOn The Perimeter (1984), which focused her attentions on theGreenham Common Women's Peace Camp atRAF Greenham Common inBerkshire, andIn The Pink (1987), which was a book looking at the hunting and thehunt saboteur fraternities.

Blackwood published 10 books during her lifetime.The Collected Stories was published posthumously.

• The Stepdaughter (1976)
• Great Granny Webster (1977)
• The Fate of Mary Rose (1981)
• Corrigan (1984)

• For All That I Found There (1973)
• Good Night Sweet Ladies (1983)
• Never Breathe a Word: The Collected Stories of Caroline Blackwood (2010)

• Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone to So Much Trouble (1980)
• On the Perimeter (1984)
• In the Pink (1987)
• The Last of the Duchess (1995)

Blackwood was married three times, and had four children.

• Lucian Freud, married 9 December 1953, divorced 1958.^{[citation needed]}
• Israel Citkowitz, married 15 August 1959, divorced 1972, three daughters: Natalya,Eugenia, and Ivana.
• Robert Lowell, married 21 October 1972, one son. Lowell died in 1977.

In 1957, Blackwood moved toNew York City and studied acting at theStella Adler school.^{[citation needed]}

Ann Fleming, the wife ofIan Fleming, introduced Blackwood toLucian Freud. After they started seeing each other, the coupleeloped in Paris on 9 December 1953.

By 1966, when Blackwood and Citkowitz's youngest, Ivana, was born,^[8] their marriage was over. Citkowitz continued to live nearby and helped raise their daughters until his death.

During the mid-1960s, Blackwood had an affair withRobert Silvers, a founder and co-editor ofThe New York Review of Books. He stayed close to the family thereafter.^[5][6] According to Ivana, she and Silvers both suspected that he was her biological father.^[8] But Blackwood revealed on her deathbed that Ivana's father was another lover: the screenwriterIvan Moffat. He was a grandson of actor-managerSir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his wife.^[5][6]

On 22 June 1978, Natalya, Blackwood's eldest daughter with Citkowitz, died at age 17 frompostural asphyxia due to adrug overdose.^[8]

Blackwood and Lowell lived in London and atMilgate House in Kent. The sequence of poems in Lowell'sThe Dolphin (1973) provides a disrupted narrative of his involvement with Blackwood and the birth of their son. (Lowell's friend, fellow poetElizabeth Bishop, strongly advised Lowell not to publish the book, advice he ignored). Lowell suffered frombipolar disorder, and Blackwood reacted to his manic episodes with distress, confusion, feelings of uselessness, and fear about the effects on their children.

In 1977, Lowell died, reportedly clutching one of Freud's portraits of Blackwood, while in the back seat of a New York cab. He was returning to his former wife, the writerElizabeth Hardwick.^[9]

In 1977, to avoid taxation, Blackwood left England and went to live inCounty Kildare, Ireland. She had an apartment at the greatGeorgian mansion ofCastletown House, which was owned by her cousinDesmond Guinness.^{[citation needed]}

Ten years later, in 1987, she returned to the United States, settling in a large house inSag Harbor, on easternLong Island in New York. Although her abilities were reduced by alcoholism, she continued to write; her work of that era includes two memoirs, ofPrincess Margaret and ofFrancis Bacon, published inThe New York Review of Books in 1992.^[10]

On 14 February 1996, Lady Caroline Blackwood died from cancer, at the Mayfair Hotel onPark Avenue inNew York City, aged 64.^[11]

• Davenport-Hines, Richard. "Caroline Blackwood" in theOxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.

• Official Profile onNational Portrait Gallery, London
• Lady Caroline Blackwood, Wry Novelist, Is Dead at 64 onNew York Times