Helen Craik

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During the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, HC wrote both poetry and novels. Her fiction included some historical and some contemporary works.

Milestones

Probably after June 1751
HC was born at the sixteenth-century Arbigland Hall near Kirkbean in Dumfriesshire, on a low-lying blunt peninsula jutting into the Solway Firth. She was one of six legitimate children.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
October 1789
HC , in her late thirties, penned her first work which is known to survive: a poem written in Robert Burns 's copy of his Poems published at Edinburgh.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 193-32.
229n56
June 1811
HC wrote for the Farmer's Magazine a sequence of two letters containing a memoir of her father, William Craik of Arbigland Hall, Dumfriesshire.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 193-32.
230n60
11 June 1825
HC died at Flimby Lodge, near Maryport in Cumberland, aged seventy-four.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 193-32.
229n55
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

Probably after June 1751
HC was born at the sixteenth-century Arbigland Hall near Kirkbean in Dumfriesshire, on a low-lying blunt peninsula jutting into the Solway Firth. She was one of six legitimate children.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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