Catherine Crowe

20 September 1790 - 14 June 1872

Between 1838 and 1859, Catherine Crowe produced five novels, two plays, a number of short stories (including ghost stories), a translation and several children's tales.

Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.

149

Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.

She was a pioneer of domestic realism who combined treatment of the unseen and supernatural,

Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.

149

with acute observation of the details of life.

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.

Her fiction contains acerbic commentary on the status of middle-class women, and refuses to dispose of its heroines according to convention.

Milestones

20 September 1790

Catherine Stevens (later CC ) was born at Borough Green in Kent.

This makes her ten years older than the date given in some sources, like Shattock and Sutherland.

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

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

1838

CC anonymously published her first work, the historical Aristodemus, a Tragedy.

Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.

By 30 January 1841

CC published her first novel, Adventures of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence, which remained her most successful work of fiction.

The old Dictionary of National Biography wrongly listed Men and Women; or, Manorial Rights as CC 's first novel.

Athenæum. J. Lection.

692 (1841): 93

Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.

152

By 22 January 1848

CC published the collection for which she is now best known, The Night Side of Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers, in two volumes.

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.

Athenæum. J. Lection.

1056 (1848): 79-80

1871

CC 's final story, The Lost Portrait, appeared in Leitch Ritchie 's The Midnight Journey and Other Tales.

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.

14 June 1872

CC died of what was called a natural decay

Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.

at 22 Upper Sandgate Road, Folkestone, where she had moved only the year before.

Various sources, including Adeline Sergeant and the old Dictionary of National Biography, wrongly date her death in 1876.

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

Biography

Birth and Early Years

20 September 1790

Catherine Stevens (later CC ) was born at Borough Green in Kent.

This makes her ten years older than the date given in some sources, like Shattock and Sutherland.

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

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.