Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock

(1826-1887)

   The daughter of Thomas Mulock, a Nonconformist clergyman from Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, she came to London in about 1846. There she met some influential people who encouraged her in her writing stories for children, of which Cola Monti (1849) was the best known. In 1865 she married George Lillie Craik, a partner in the Macmillan publishing company, and lived at Shortlands, Bromley, Kent. She wrote the Christmas carol "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen." Some of her publications: The Ogilvies, 1849 (three-volume novel). Olive, 1850 (novel). Alice Learmont, 1852 (fairy story). John Halifax, Gentleman, 1857 (novel). The Head of the Family, 1851 (novel). Avillion and Other Tales, 1853 (short stories). John Halifax, Gentleman, 1857 (novel). The Little Lame Prince, 1875 (novel). Poems of Thirty Years, New and Old, 1881. Some of her poems: "A Hymn for Christmas Morning," "Four Years," "Green Things Growing," "Highland Cattle," "Philip, My King," "Rothesay Bay," "The Aurora on the Clyde," "The Blackbird," "The Canary in His Cage," "Westward Ho!"

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, 18 Sonnets (www.sonnets.org/craik.htm). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). Poems, by the Author of "A Life for a Life" (Dinah Maria Mulock Craik). Ticknor & Fields, 1860. The Best Loved Poems of the American People. Hazel Felleman, ed. Doubleday, 1936. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http:// www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.