Dinah Maria Craik
English Novelist
1826 – 1887 A.D.

Dinah Maria Craik, better known as Miss Mulock, an English novelist, born in Staffordshire. In 1846 she came to London, and began writing stories for the young, and in 1849 published her first novel The Ogilvies which obtained great success. The delightful fairy story Alice Learmont was brought out in 1852, and was followed by numerous short stories displaying great imaginative power.

In 1857 appeared the work by which she will principally be remembered, John Halifax, Gentleman, a noble presentation of the highest ideal of English middle-class life. With this novel Miss Murlock practically delivered her message, and in her later period she returned to the fanciful tales which had so frequently employed her youth, which some of her poems, such as Philip my King and Douglas, Douglas, Tender and True, achieved a wide popularity.

In 1864 she married George Lillie Craik, a partner in the house of Macmillan & Co., himself distinguished as a man of letters.

Richard Garnett gives this literary estimate: “She was not a genius, and she does not express the ideals and aspirations of women of exceptional genius; but the tender philanthropic, and at the same time energetic and practical womanhood of ordinary life has never had a more sufficient representation.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.