Dinah Maria Craik (née Mulock)

Author.

20 April 1826 – 12 October 1887

Dinah Maria Craik (née Mulock), by Sir Hubert von Herkomer (died 1914), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1946. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Education

Brampton House Academy.

Aged 13 left the Academy and helped her mother in her mother’s private school.

Attended the School of Design, Somerset House learning drawing.

Trained to be a governess.

Some Achievements and Interests

Wrote novels and children’s stories becoming a bestselling author. Many deal with challenges women faced and reflect the tension she felt between traditional values and lived experience. In her work she supported women to live independently and be self-sufficient. She also addressed issues of ethnicity.

1856 John Halifax, Gentleman, a bestselling novel of the period.

Supported the Married Women’s Property Act believing that women should keep their own money, earned and inherited, and should be aware of their husband’s financial means to help control spending; see her novel A Brave Lady (Macmillan’s Magazine, 1869–70).

1871 Published Hannah about a man’s marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, an act illegal in England at that time.

1879 Published Young Mrs. Jardine which examined circumstances when a woman should be able to separate from a husband.

Issues

Her father was a difficult man who abandoned his family.

Her mother died when she was 19 and her father stopped supporting the family.

Her two younger brothers died young.

Was a widely read author in her time but fell into obscurity after her death. She is now being reassessed.

Connection to Bloomsbury

Lived at 32 Hunter Street in 1847.

Researched and networked in the British Museum Reading Room in the 1840s.

Women in her Network

Anna Maria Hall, Camilla Crosland, friend Elizabeth Gaskell, Frances Martin, Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith, Mona Caird.

Adopted daughter Dorothy Craik Pilkington.

Writing/Publications

Included poetry, essays, travel writing, translations, children’s stories and novels.

From 1846 her stories and poems began to appear regularly in popular magazines such as Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Good Words, Sharpe’s London Magazine, Once a Week.

1849 The Ogilvies.
1850 Olive.
1851 The Half-Caste: An Old Governess’s Tale, Founded on Fact published in Chambers’s Papers for the People.
1856 John Halifax Gentleman.
1857 A Woman’s Thoughts about Women (published as essays in Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts). Published as a book 1858.
1859 Poems, her first book of verse.
1859 Life for a Life. 
1862 Mistress and Maid.
1863 The Fairy Book, stories for children.
1867 Two Marriages. 
1868 The Woman’s Kingdom. 
1871 Little Sunshine’s Holiday, a children’s story.
1875 The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak, children’s book.
1886 King Arthur: Not a Love Story, a novella, addressing adoption.

Further Reading

Mitchell, S. (2007). Dinah Mulock Craik. A Victorian Web Book. Retrieved from Books for Children.

Mitchell, S. Craik [nee Mulock], Dinah Maria (1826-1887). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved from Craik [née Mulock], Dinah Maria (1826–1887), writer | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (oxforddnb.com).