Lady Caroline Blackwood; Novelist

Lady Caroline Blackwood, 64, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who wrote wry, macabre novels. Blackwood published nine books, including “The Stepdaughter” and “The Fate of Mary Rose.” Her most recent book was “The Last of the Duchess,” an eccentric, Kafkaesque account of her vain attempt to visit the ailing Duchess of Windsor. After her marriage to painter Lucian Freud ended in 1956, Blackwood installed herself in the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles and played a tiny part in the television series “Have Gun Will Travel.” Stephen Spender asked her to write an article for Encounter magazine about California beatniks and that launched her writing career. She later moved to New York. On Wednesday in New York of cancer.