Dinah Mulock Craik

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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.
Oil portrait of Dinah Mulock Craik, by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, 1887. She sits in a wooden chair, her full-figured torso facing to her left but her face turned to look directly at the viewer and hands folded in her lap. She wears a dark dress which merges with the dark background, and a white high-collared blouse with embroidery at the sleeves and lacing in front. She wears a lace headpiece hanging from her grey hair, and her expression is stern. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Virginia Woolf
Between 1 January and 30 June 1897, her reading included but was not limited to the following: Charlotte Brontë , Lady Barlow (a commentator on Charles Darwin ), Dinah Mulock Craik , George Eliot ,...
Textual Production Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde served as general editor of a monthly magazine which he took on as Lady's World. He then immediately acted on Dinah Mulock Craik 's suggestion of changing its name to The Woman's World .
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Gardiner, Juliet. Oscar Wilde; A Life in Letters, Writings, and Wit. Collins and Brown.
76-80
Reception Lucy Walford
LW 's commentary suggest she was superficial in her judgements, anchoring her opinions time and again on appearance. A prominent example comes in her assessment of George Eliot , with whom she was invited to...
Friends, Associates Sarah Tytler
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.
261-344
She became an especially good friend of Dinah Mulock Craik
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
Clearly delighted with the opportunity to mix in literary circles, ST recorded her personal observations of these authors in Men and Women Met by the Way, the final 100-page-long section of her family autobiography...
Reception Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT , whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Textual Production Ethel Sidgwick
Riquet with the Tuft, originally a fairy story in French (Riquet à la houppe) by Charles Perrault , had been often retold in English, notably in Dinah Mulock Craik 's anthology The Fairy Book, 1862.
Friends, Associates John Ruskin
JR 's social and intellectual network was extensive: amongst his acquaintances were Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning , Elizabeth Gaskell , Violet Hunt , Jean Ingelow , Flora Shaw , Jane Welsh Carlyle and Thomas Carlyle
Textual Features Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR 's domestic realism bears comparison with other neglected chroniclers of the complexities of unsensational Victorian middle-class female lives such as Dinah Mulock Craik and Margaret Oliphant , and her revisions of classic fairy tales...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The other stories are Riquet à la Houppe, Jack and the Bean Stalk, and The White Cat.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
2
, pp. 285-7.
289
Some had appeared in Dinah Mulock Craik 's The Fairy Book, 1862.
Education Beatrix Potter
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...
Friends, Associates Margaret Oliphant
MO and her husband sometimes attended parties with such writers as Samuel Carter Hall , Anna Maria Hall , Dinah Mulock (later Craik) , and Mary Howitt .
Williams, Merryn. Margaret Oliphant: A Critical Biography. St Martin’s Press.
19
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.
Publishing Annie Keary
Critic Gaye Tuchman with Nina E. Fortin uses Oldbury as an example of the impact a publisher could have on a writer's popularity, noting that because it appeared in volume form only, AKlost the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sheila Kaye-Smith
Here she relates significant moments in her life to what she was reading at the time. She says that her reading, directed at first by chance and the choices of others, later moved towards what...

Timeline

By 3 March 1470: Sir Thomas Malory, a political prisoner in...

Writing climate item

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...

National or international item

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...

Writing climate item

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,...

Women writers item

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...

Building item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Building item

1877

Only 1% of the female inmates at Tothill local prison could be described as functionally literate.

Texts

Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Brave Lady. Harper and Brothers.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Brave Lady. Hurst and Blackett, 1870.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and James Godwin. A Hero. Addey, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, editor. A Legacy. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Life for a Life. Hurst and Blackett.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Life for a Life. Hurst and Blackett, 1859.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and H. J. Lucas. A New Year’s Gift to Sick Children. Edmonston and Douglas, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Noble Life. Hurst and Blackett, 1866.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts About Women. Hurst and Blackett, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. F. M. Lupton Publishing, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. About Money and Other Things. Macmillan, 1886.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. “About Sisterhoods”. Longman’s Magazine, No. January, pp. 303-13.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Agatha’s Husband. Chapman and Hall, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Agatha’s Husband. Chapman and Hall, 1858.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and James Godwin. Alice Learmont: A Fairy Tale. Chapman and Hall, 1852.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and Frederick Noel Paton. An Unknown Country. Macmillan, 1887.
Craik, Dinah Mulock, and C. Napier Hemy. An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall. Macmillan, 1884.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Avillion and Other Tales. Smith, Elder, 1853.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Bread upon the Waters; A Family in Love; A Low Marriage; The Double House. B. Tauchnitz, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Bread upon the Waters; A Governess’s Life. Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, 1852.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Children’s Poetry. Macmillan, 1881.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Christian’s Mistake. Hurst and Blackett, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Christian’s Mistake. Harper and Brothers, 1865.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. Hannah. Hurst and Blackett, 1872.