She was born Lucy Lane, the daughter of John Lane of Barbados, and married Clifford in 1875. After his death in 1879, she earned herself a prominent place in English literary life as a novelist, and later as a dramatist. Her best-known story, Mrs Keith's Crime (1885), was followed by several other volumes, the best-known of which is Aunt Anne (1893); and the literary talent in the family was inherited by her daughter, the poet Ethel Fisher Dilke, a poet.