Lina Duff Gordon

Lina Duff Gordon, later Lina Waterfield, grew up at her aunt Janet Ross’s villa above Florence. She was twenty-six when she wrote The Story of Assisi in 1900.

In 1902 she married the painter Aubrey Waterfield. She helped found the library of the British Institute of Florence in 1916 and from 1921 to 1935 was the Italian correspondent of The Observer. She also wrote Home Life in Italy and an autobiography, Castle in Italy. She died in England in 1964.