Dinah Mulock Craik

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Standard Name: Craik, Dinah Mulock
Birth Name: Dinah Maria Mulock
Married Name: Dinah Maria Craik
Indexed Name: Dinah Maria Craik
Pseudonym: The author of Olive
Pseudonym: The author of John Halifax, Gentleman
Used Form: Miss Mulock
Used Form: Mrs Craik
Used Form: the author of A Hero
Used Form: the author of Michael the Miner
Used Form: the author of Olive and the Ogilvies
Used Form: the author of The Head of the Family
Used Form: the author of The Ogilvies
A prolific mid-Victorian professional writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and travel writing, DMC published twenty novels whose commitment to Christian ideals of self-sacrifice and Victorian middle-class values joins with trenchant feminist critique and narrative innovation. John Halifax, Gentleman, portrait of a self-made industrialist, is less representative than her novels about the ongoing practical and psychological challenges facing women in difficult circumstances. DMC 's strong delineation of character and relationships, tendency to write beyond the marriage ending, and treatments of race and ethnicity all repay consideration. Some of her children's stories remain in circulation today. As an essayist, she produced forthright yet witty advice directed at improving women's lot. Her work has fallen into obscurity, although she was one of the most widely read authors of her time.
Oil portrait of Dinah Mulock Craik, by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, 1887. She sits in a wooden chair, her full-figured torso facing to her left but her face turned to look directly at the viewer and hands folded in her lap. She wears a dark dress which merges with the dark background, and a white high-collared blouse with embroidery at the sleeves and lacing in front. She wears a lace headpiece hanging from her grey hair, and her expression is stern. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ was an advocate of realist novels with well drawn characters and a coherent plot. Her review of Charlotte Chanter 's Over the Cliffs compared the plot to a child's attempt at drawing a picture,—the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sheila Kaye-Smith
Here she relates significant moments in her life to what she was reading at the time. She says that her reading, directed at first by chance and the choices of others, later moved towards what...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
Clearly delighted with the opportunity to mix in literary circles, ST recorded her personal observations of these authors in Men and Women Met by the Way, the final 100-page-long section of her family autobiography...
Textual Production Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde served as general editor of a monthly magazine which he took on as Lady's World. He then immediately acted on Dinah Mulock Craik 's suggestion of changing its name to The Woman's World .
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Gardiner, Juliet. Oscar Wilde; A Life in Letters, Writings, and Wit. Collins and Brown.
76-80
Textual Production Georgiana Craik
This book was produced as one of Dinah Mulock Craik 's series of books for girls.
New York Times. New York Times Company.
1857 (23 September 1871): 2
Textual Production Camilla Crosland
Her other work for periodicals includes a short story, A Railroad Adventure, published in 1843 in Ainsworth's Magazine, as well as pieces in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Bentley's Miscellany, the Illustrated London...
Textual Production Charles Dickens
Other contributions were appeared from Mrs Alexander , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Edward Bulwer-Lytton , Caroline Chisholm (later parodied by CD ), Wilkie Collins , Dinah Mulock and Georgiana Craik , Amelia B. Edwards ,...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The other stories are Riquet à la Houppe, Jack and the Bean Stalk, and The White Cat.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
2
, pp. 285-7.
289
Some had appeared in Dinah Mulock Craik 's The Fairy Book, 1862.
Textual Production Amelia B. Edwards
In the same year ABE was a contributor (with Jean Ingelow , Dora Greenwell , Laura Wilson Barker Taylor , Caroline Norton , Jennett Humphreys , and Dinah Mulock Craik ) to Home Thoughts and Home Scenes, In Original Poems.
Textual Production Ethel Sidgwick
Riquet with the Tuft, originally a fairy story in French (Riquet à la houppe) by Charles Perrault , had been often retold in English, notably in Dinah Mulock Craik 's anthology The Fairy Book, 1862.
Textual Production George Eliot
However, this year and the next (years marked by personal troubles) took her no further than the preliminary stages, while she also planned or wrote a number of poems. While the ideas were percolating, however...
Textual Production Elizabeth Gaskell
The idea of self-improvement through writing and reading correlates to the strong emphasis in EG 's fiction on education and the impact of environment. This was undoubtedly influenced by a Unitarian intellectual background indebted to...
Textual Features Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR 's domestic realism bears comparison with other neglected chroniclers of the complexities of unsensational Victorian middle-class female lives such as Dinah Mulock Craik and Margaret Oliphant , and her revisions of classic fairy tales...
Reception Lucy Walford
LW 's commentary suggest she was superficial in her judgements, anchoring her opinions time and again on appearance. A prominent example comes in her assessment of George Eliot , with whom she was invited to...
Reception Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT , whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...

Timeline

By 3 March 1470: Sir Thomas Malory, a political prisoner in...

Writing climate item

By 3 March 1470

Sir Thomas Malory , a political prisoner in London, most probably in the Tower, finished compiling and writing his collection of legendaryArthurian romances, Le Morte d'Arthur.

1 September 1835: As of this date, Lord Lyndhurst's Act made...

National or international item

1 September 1835

As of this date, Lord Lyndhurst 's Act made marriages between in-laws, such as a man and his deceased wife's sister, illegal in England.

January 1845: Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine began...

Writing climate item

January 1845

Douglas Jerrold 's Shilling Magazine began publication at the Punch office; this short-lived radical journal addressed the masses of England.

By 23 September 1848: A volume of fourteen Poems by a Sempstress,...

Women writers item

By 23 September 1848

A volume of fourteen Poems by a Sempstress, published by E. L. E., called for just and equal brotherhood.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1091 (1848): 957

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .

1 November 1859: Alexander Macmillan began publishing Macmillan's...

Writing climate item

1 November 1859

Alexander Macmillan began publishing Macmillan's Magazine, the first major monthly magazine priced at a shilling.

1877: Only 1% of the female inmates at Tothill...

Building item

1877

Only 1% of the female inmates at Tothill local prison could be described as functionally literate.

Texts

Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Brave Lady. Harper and Brothers.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Brave Lady. Hurst and Blackett, 1870.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and James Godwin. A Hero. Addey, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, editor. A Legacy. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Life for a Life. Hurst and Blackett.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Life for a Life. Hurst and Blackett, 1859.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and H. J. Lucas. A New Year’s Gift to Sick Children. Edmonston and Douglas, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Noble Life. Hurst and Blackett, 1866.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts About Women. Hurst and Blackett, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. F. M. Lupton Publishing, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. About Money and Other Things. Macmillan, 1886.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. “About Sisterhoods”. Longman’s Magazine, No. January, pp. 303-13.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Agatha’s Husband. Chapman and Hall, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Agatha’s Husband. Chapman and Hall, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and James Godwin. Alice Learmont: A Fairy Tale. Chapman and Hall, 1852.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and Frederick Noel Paton. An Unknown Country. Macmillan, 1887.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and C. Napier Hemy. An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall. Macmillan, 1884.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Avillion and Other Tales. Smith, Elder, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Bread upon the Waters; A Family in Love; A Low Marriage; The Double House. B. Tauchnitz, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Bread upon the Waters; A Governess’s Life. Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, 1852.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Children’s Poetry. Macmillan, 1881.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Christian’s Mistake. Hurst and Blackett, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Christian’s Mistake. Harper and Brothers, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Hannah. Hurst and Blackett, 1872.