The Country Parson's Wife

Louisa Lane Clarke (c1812-1883) was an author and botanist who lived and died in Guernsey. She married the Rev. Thomas Clarke and they lived in Wood Eaton in Oxfordshire until his death. In 1865 she returned with their daughter Theodora to Guernsey. She wrote a number of popular scientific works including The Common Seaweeds of the British Coast and Channel Islands (1865) and A Descriptive Catalogue of the Most Instructive and Beautiful Objects for the Microscope (1858) through which she became quite well-known. She applied the same forensic eye for detail to her writing on local subjects. Amongst her other works are: Recollections and Legends of Serk: An Account of its First Settlement and Early History (1840), Redstone's Guernsey Guide (1841), The Country Parson's Wife (1842), Anglo-Norman Legends (1842), The New Parish Church of St. Ann (1850), Legend of St. Vignalis (1851) and The Island of Alderney (1851).