Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Dinah Mulock Craik
-
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.
"Dinah Mulock Craik" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dinah_Maria_Craik_%28n%C3%A9e_Mulock%29_by_Sir_Hubert_von_Herkomer.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
She received £180 from publishers Hurst and Blackett
. The novel was dedicated to D. M.
Jewsbury, Geraldine. Right or Wrong. Hurst and Blackett, 1859.
prelims
whom some believe to be Dinah Mulock Craik
, though it has been argued that the true recipient...
Education
Kate Chopin
Following her father's death, her education was supplemented by her maternal great-grandmother Victoire Verdon Charleville
, who placed a particular emphasis on French and music.The young Kate O'Flaherty was also a voracious reader, and enjoyed...
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Georgiana Craik
GC
was related by marriage to prominent novelist Dinah Mulock Craik
. Dinah Mulock married a nephew of Georgina's father, who shared his name of George Lillie Craik
and was a partner at the Macmillan...
Family and Intimate relationships
Camilla Crosland
According to Newton Crosland's autobiography, Rambles Round My Life, he was initially attracted to both Camilla and her friend Dinah Craik
. He admits, I was captivated by both ladies at the same time...
In the years leading up to her marriage, Camilla Toulmin and Dinah Mulock Craik
were good friends (Craik was one of her bridesmaids); however, Craik's biographer Sally Mitchell
mentions Crosland only briefly. Newton Crosland
posits...
ST
's career as a writer introduced her to many leading literary figures (especially those of Scots origin) whom she entertainingly describes in Three Generations.
Tytler, Sarah. Three Generations. J. Murray, 1911.
261-344
She became an especially good friend of Dinah Mulock Craik
Friends, Associates
Anna Maria Hall
One of AMH
's closest friends was the actress Helen Faucit
, later Lady Martin. Though socially conservative in her attitudes, she was apparently more ready than her husband to achieve friendly relations with those...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Power Cobbe
FPC
continued to promote women's writing and women's causes in tandem, in such places as her writings in 1869 and 1870 on Dinah Craik
's A Brave Lady, a fictional illustration of the need...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Meteyard
The novel's passing allusion to Dinah Mulock
's John Halifax, Gentleman points up similarities between her domestic fiction and EM
's two later novels, although EM's style is considerably more elaborate than Craik's and her canvas narrower.
Timeline
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 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 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, 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 in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum
.
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 local prison could be described as functionally literate.