Isabella Valancy Crawford

Isabella Valancy Crawford (25 December 1850 - 12 February 1887) was a Canadian poet.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, one of twelve or thirteen children, she and her family emigrated to Canada in 1857. They lived in several communities in what is now Ontario, before settling in Peterborough.

In the 1870s she began a career writing poetry, novels and short stories for a variety of Canadian newspapers and magazines. Although a prolific writer, only one book, the self-published Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems (1884), appeared in her lifetime.

Crawford died at the age 36 in Toronto, Ontario.

Bibliography

• Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems - 1884
• The Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford - 1905
• Isabella Valancy Crawford - 1923
• Hugh and Ion - 1977
• Malcolm's Katie - 1987

Reference

Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Second Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997: 238-239. ISBN 0-19-541167-6