Louisa Stuart Costello’s Life

Abstract

Costello was born on October 9, 1799, to James Francis Costello, a captain in the 14th Regiment, and Elizabeth Tothridge. There is still some debate about the issue of Costello’s place of birth. Rosemary Mitchell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) identifies it as Sussex, while Costello’s death certificate says she was “présumée née” in Paris.¹ While Costello is often identified as an Irish poet, and suggested to have been born in County Mayo, Ireland, where her father was born, there is no evidence to suggest that she actually ever visited Ireland, and Costello certainly identifies herself as an English writer.² The 1851 census records her place of birth as “Middlesex, London,” which seems the most reliable source. By 1803, when her younger brother, Dudley, was born, the family were living in Sussex. Little is known of Costello’s elder brother, whose death at sea on HMS Tweed (1807), in 1813, she commemorates in two poignant poems.³ It is likely that Elizabeth Tothridge Costello is the author of an accomplished novel, The Soldier’s Orphan (1809): the novel’s focus on the importance of an equal education for both sexes owes much to Wollstonecraft’s theories and explains, in part, her daughter’s astonishing breadth of knowledge.⁴ James Francis Costello had a somewhat checkered army career, rising to the rank of captain in 1795.