Isa Craig

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Isa Craig was a poet, journalist, editor, and novelist whose literary work was informed by the concerns of the mid-Victorian feminist movement. Her verse appeared in several periodicals, including the feminist English Woman's Journal, on whose staff she served. As assistant secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science between 1857 and 1865, IC compiled and edited that organization's annual Transactions. Much of her journalistic writing and fiction is didactic in tone, evincing a concern with the struggles and moral reform of working-class daily life.

Milestones

17 October 1831

IC , poet, journalist, and feminist, was born in Edinburgh.
Kamm, Josephine, and Mary Stocks. Rapiers and Battleaxes: The Women’s Movement And Its Aftermath. George Allen and Unwin.
102
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

By 21 June 1856

IC 's first book of verse, Poems, a collection of her contributions to The Scotsman, was published in Edinburgh by Blackwood .
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
1495 (21 June 1856): 775

1858

Annual Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science began to appear under IC 's editorship, including some of the earliest reports of women's public, modern political speech in Britain.
For earlier examples of women speaking in public to mixed audiences one would need to go back to Queen Elizabeth 's speeches or to preachers and prophets of the radical sects, whose ministry barely survived the seventeenth century.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
McCrone, Kathleen E. “The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science and the Advancement of Victorian Women”. Atlantis, Vol.
8
, No. 1, pp. 44-66.
46-7
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “Isa Craig and the Prize Poem on Burns”. English Woman’s Journal, Vol.
2
, No. 12, pp. 417-20.
419
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

1882

A serial tale by IC , Hold Fast By Your Sundays, appeared anonymously as a volume after featuring in the working-class family magazine Home Words: this seems to be her latest publication.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Craig, Isa. Hold Fast By Your Sundays. Home Words.
prelims

23 December 1903

IC , poet, novelist, and feminist organizer, died at Brockley in Suffolk.
Her year of death is sometimes mistakenly given as 1906.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Biography

Birth and Family

17 October 1831

IC , poet, journalist, and feminist, was born in Edinburgh.
Kamm, Josephine, and Mary Stocks. Rapiers and Battleaxes: The Women’s Movement And Its Aftermath. George Allen and Unwin.
102
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

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