Clive, Caroline (1801–1873)
Clive, Caroline (1801–1873)
English author. Name variations: (pseudonym) V; Mrs. Archer Clive. Born Caroline Meysey-Wigley in Brompton Green, London, England, on June 24, 1801; died on July 13, 1873, at Whitfield, Herefordshire; second daughter of Edmund Meysey-Wigley, M.P. for Worcester, and Anna Maria Watkins Meysey; married Reverend Archer Clive, in 1840; children: one son; one daughter.
Illness left Caroline Clive lame at age three, depriving her of many of the usual activities of childhood. At age 39, she married the Reverend Archer Clive, rector of Solihull in Warwickshire. Under the signature V, Caroline Clive published eight volumes of poetry. She is best known as the author of Paul Ferroll (1855), a sympathetic portrait of a man who murders his wife to marry his first love. This work was followed with the less successful Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife (1860). In 1865, Clive suffered a stroke while traveling in Europe. In July 1873, she was writing in her bedroom surrounded by books and papers, when her dress caught on fire, and she was burned to death.