The nineteenth-century restoration of St. Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire, which rescued the decaying Norman structure from accelerating deterioration, included new stained-glass windows ranging in size from one to five panels wide. One of the smaller windows, on the east side of the south transept, commemorates "a sincere Christian . . . distinguished in literature," the versatile Victorian author Camilla Toulmin. It pictures St. Catherine of Siena, who wears a pensive expression under her crown and a deep red robe clasped over a deep blue gown. Her golden hair curls over her right shoulder down to her elbow, and she holds a sword in one hand, a book in the other.

The literary achievement commemorated in this striking memorial includes fifty-five years of writing fiction, children's stories, biography, translations, and essays, but poetry launched Toulmin's long writing career when "The Parting" appeared in the 1838 Book of Beauty. Soon afterward, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess...