Dinah Craik

An 1887 portrait of Dinah Craik by Hubert von Herkomer

Dinah Maria Craik (born Dinah Maria Mulock, also often credited as Miss Mulock or Mrs. Craik) (20 April 1826 - 12 October 1887) was an English novelist and poet. She was born at Stoke-on-Trent and brought up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

After the death of her mother in 1845, Dinah Maria Mulock settled in London about 1846. She was determined to obtain a livelihood by her pen, and, beginning with fiction for children, advanced steadily until placed in the front rank of the women novelists of her day. She is best known for the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1856). She followed this with A Life for a Life (1859), which she considered to be the best of her novels; others were The Ogilvies (1849), Olive (1850), The Head of the Family (1851), Agatha's Husband (1853), Hannah (1871), and Young Mrs. Jardine (1879). ("John Halifax" is based loosely around the life of John Dobell, a wine merchant from Cheltenham.)

Other works include Avillion and other Tales (1853), Christian's Mistake (1865), A Noble Life (1866), and The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875). She published some poetry, narratives of tours in Ireland and Cornwall, and A Woman's Thoughts about Women (1858). (An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall appeared in 1884.)^[1]

She married George Lillie Craik, a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the publishing house of Macmillan & Company, in 1864. They adopted a foundling baby girl, Dorothy, in 1869.

At Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, while in a period of preparation for Dorothy's wedding, she died of heart failure on 12 October 1887, aged 61. Her last words were reported to have been: "Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!" Her final book, An Unknown Country, was published by Macmillan in 1887, the year of her death.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

1. ^ Craik, Dinah Maria (1884) An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall. [New ed.] Newmill, Penzance: Patten Press for the Jamieson Library, 1988. ISBN 0950768960

External links

• Works by Dinah Craik at Project Gutenberg
• Dinah Craik at "Literary Heritage"
• Dinah Craik at the Literary Encyclopedia
• Dinah Mulock Craik by Sally Mitchell, a detailed account of her life and works at The Victorian Web.
• Works of Craik at the Victorian Women Writers Project, Indiana University
• Selected poetry at the University of Toronto
• Did George Eliot say this? - On quotations of Craik commonly misattributed to George Eliot
• Various stories by Miss Mulock (full text)
• Works by or about Dinah Craik in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Craik, Dinah Maria
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	20 April 1826
Place of birth
Date of death	12 October 1887
Place of death