Author: Coutier, Louisa H. R.
Biography:
COUTIER, Louisa Henriette Rosalie, later BIGGS (1812-98: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 12 Sept. 1812 and baptised on 24 Oct. at Andover, Hampshire, the only daughter of Captain John Martin Louis Coutier of the French Army and his wife Elizabeth Lock, who had married on 24 Oct. 1811. Nothing is known of her education but she evidently acquired a good knowledge of French, publishing a novel in Paris, La Montagne de Saint-Lié (1830), and a translation of Guizot’s History of the English Revolution (1838). In English she also published Hours of Reverie (1832) and The Prayer of a Solitaire (1837), not incompetent Anglo-French renderings of Sehnsucht but perhaps a little late in the day. She married a farmer, Harvey Biggs (1808-94), on 3 Dec. 1838. He had a farm of over 250 acres at Knight’s Enham near Andover, inherited from his father. They had three sons. One son, Louis Coutier Biggs, was educated at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, entered the church, and became Curate of Grendon, Northamptonshire. He edited Hymns Ancient and Modern (1867) to which she contributed and which she assisted in editing. Another son, Francis, was still at home in 1891 so was probably managing the farm. She died at Bilgrove Cottage, Knight’s Enham, on 22 May 1898. (ancestry.co.uk 20 Apr. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 20 Apr. 2022; Hampshire Chronicle 10 Dec. 1838, 28 May 1898) AA