Maria Dinah Craik

Dinah Maria Craik (née Dinah Maria Mulock, also often credited as Miss Mulock) (20 April 1826 - 12 October 1887) was an English novelist and poet. She was born at Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.

After the death of her mother in 1845, Dinah Maria Mulock had settled in London about 1846. She was determined to obtain a livelihood by her pen, and, beginning with fiction for children, advanced steadily until placed in the front rank of the women novelists of her day.

She is best known for the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1857). She followed this with A Life for a Life (1859), which she considered to be the best of her novels; others were The Ogilvies (1849), Olive (1850), The Head of the Family (1851), Agatha's Husband (1853), Hannah (1871), and Young Mrs. Jardine (1879).

Other works include Avillion and other Tales (1853), and The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875). She published some poetry, narratives of tours in Ireland and Cornwall, and A Woman's Thoughts about Women (1858).

She married George Lillie Craik, a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the publishing house of Macmillan & Company, in 1864. They adopted a foundling baby girl, Dorothy, in 1869.

At Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, while in a period of preparation for Dorothy's wedding, she died of heart failure on 12 October 1887, aged 61. Her last words were reported to have been: "Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!"

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Her final book, "An Unknown Country", was published by Harper and Brothers in 1887, the year of her death.