Lady Lindsay was a leading figure in London society long before she began the literary career that occupied the last twenty-five years of her life. She walked in Venice with Robert Browning, received Alfred Lord Tennyson's comments upon her watercolors, and mingled in the leading art circles of the times, forming lifelong friendships with John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and George F. Watts. Although her sonnets are slowly being recognized and anthologized, most of her longer works remain ignored. If Lindsay is noted at all, it is in her role as the wife of Sir Coutts Lindsay, who founded the successful Grosvenor Gallery.

She emerged as a literary figure only after separating from her husband and enduring a debilitating illness in the 1880s. Having composed poetry privately since childhood, Lindsay launched her work into the public realm with considerable popular success. Her verses, disclosing social concern as well...