Quick Facts
Biography
Lucy Crane (1842–1882) was an English writer, art critic and translator. She worked on children's stories and nursery rhymes and lectured in England on fine art. She was born in Liverpool in 1842 as the daughter of the portrait and miniature painter Thomas Crane.
Life
Lucy Crane and her family moved from Liverpool to Torquay in 1845. Lucy then went to school in London, and in 1859 the family left Torquay for London. From an early age, Lucy Crane showed considerable taste and skill in drawing and coloring. Circumstances, however, turned her attention to general educational work and she found employment as a governess. She became an accomplished musician, and was not only distinguished for her delicacy of touch as an executant, but also for the classical refinement of her taste and her knowledge of the earlier Italian and English.
Work
Lucy worked on children's nursery rhymes and stories, and she translated the Brothers Grimm's "Household Stories" collection from German to English in 1882. She also worked with her father and brother Walter Crane on a number of projects. She wrote original verses for rhymes such as ‘How Jessie was Lost,’ ‘The Adventures of Puffy,’ ‘Annie and Jack in London' for Walter's coloured toy-books, some of which were published in Argosy Magazine. The selection and arrangement of the accompaniments to the nursery songs in the ‘Baby's Opera’ and ‘Baby's Bouquet’ are also due to her.
In the last few years of her life, Lucy Crane delivered lectures in London on fine art. Some of her views of art were socialist, and influenced by Ruskin and Carlyle. Six of her lectures were published as Art and the Formation of Taste posthumously in 1888 by Macmillan Publishers.
She died on 31 March 1882, at the house of a friend at Bolton le Moors.