Lady Emily Lutyens (1874–1964)

Lady Emily Lutyens, née Bulwer-Lytton, was a daughter of Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, former Viceroy of India, and his wife Edith Villiers. In 1897, she married the architect Edwin Landseer Lutyens, with whom she had five children; but the union was largely unhappy. It deteriorated further after Lady Emily, a member of the Theosophical Society, developed an obsessive devotion to the Indian spiritual philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Her devotion to Krishnamurti led her to follow him around the world. In 1916, Lady Emily established an all-India Home Rule movement, holding meetings in her London drawing room. Her daughter Elisabeth Lutyens became a well-known composer; her youngest daughter Mary Lutyens became a writer and the acknowledged expert on Krishnamurti. Lady Emily was the author of A Blessed Girl (1953), a memoir of her Victorian childhood, The Birth of a Rowland (1956), and Candles in the Sun (1957).