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.
  • BirthName: Helen Craik
  • Pseudonyms: the author of Henry of Northumberland; the author of Adelaide de Narbonne
Photograph of the ten-line, unsigned poem that Helen Craik wrote in her own hand to celebrate Robert Burns, at the head of the Glenriddell Manuscript of his work. National Library of Scotland.

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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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