Born [Dinah Maria Mulock], at Stoke-upon-Trent, 20 April 1826. To London, 1846 [?]. First novel produced, 1849. Settled at North End, Hampstead, 1855 [?]. Civil List Pension, 1864. Married to George Lillie Craik, 29 April 1865. Settled soon afterwards at Shortlands, Kent, where she lived till her death. Died suddenly, 12 Oct. 1887. Works: [all anon.], “Cola Monti,” 1849; “The Ogilvies,” 1849; “Olive,” 1850; “The Head of a Family,” 1851; “Alice Learmont,” 1852; “Agatha’s Husband,” 1852; “Bread upon the Waters,” 1852; “A Hero,” 1853; “Avillon,” 1853; “John Halifax, Gentleman,” 1856; “Nothing New,” 1857; “A Woman’s Thoughts about Women,” 1858; “Poems,” 1859; “Romantic Tales,” 1859; “A Life for a Life,” 1859; “Domestic Stories,” 1860; “Our Year,” 1860; “Studies from Life,” 1861; “Mistress and Maid,” 1862; “The Fairy-Book,” 1863; “A New Year’s Gift to Sick Children,” 1865; “Home Thoughts and Home Scenes,” 1865; “A Noble Life,” 1866; “Christian’s Mistake,” 1866; “Two Marriages,” 1867; “Woman’s Kingdom,” 1868; “The Unkind Word,” 1869; “A Brave Lady,” 1870; “Fair France,” 1871; “Hannah,” 1871; “Little Sunshine’s Holiday,” 1871; “Twenty Years Ago,” 1871; “Adventures of a Brownie,” 1872; “Songs of Our Youth,” 1874; “My Mother and I,” 1874; “Sermons out of Church,” 1875; “The Little Lame Prince,” 1875; “The Laurel Bush,” 1877; “Will Denbigh,” 1877; “A Legacy,” 1878; “Young Mrs. Jardine,” 1879; “Thirty Years,” 1880; “Children’s Poetry,” 1881; “His Little Mother,” 1881; “Plain Speaking,” 1882; “An Unsentimental Journey,” 1884; “Miss Tommy,” 1884; “About Money,” 1886; “King Arthur,” 1886; “Fifty Golden Years,” 1887; “An Unknown Country,” 1887. Posthumous: “Concerning Man,” 1888. She translated: Guizot’s “M. de Barante,” 1867; Mme. de Witt’s “A French Country Family,” 1867; “A Parisian Family,” 1870; and “An Only Sister,” 1873; and edited: “Is it True?” 1872.

  Miss Mulock lived in a small house in a street a little farther off even in the wilds than ours [1853]. She was a tall young woman with a slim pliant figure, and eyes that had a way of fixing the eyes of her interlocutor in a manner which did not please my shy fastidiousness. It was embarassing as if she meant to read the other upon whom she gazed,—a pretension which one resented. It was merely, no doubt, a fashion of what was the intense school of the time. Mrs. Browning did the same thing the only time I met her, and this to one quite indisposed to be read. But Dinah was always kind, enthusiastic, somewhat didactic and apt to teach, and much looked up to by her little band of young women.

  Who that knew her can ever forget the tall, gray-eyed, silver-haired, motherly woman, gentle and pleasant in speech, yet firm withal and of wholesome resoluteness of purpose, who made her home in the pleasant Kentish country, ten miles southeast of London, a place of pleasant pilgrim age for so many loving friends.

  Mrs. Craik was quite small, had soft, loving gray eyes and silvery gray hair. Her voice was low and gentle, and her manners pretty and natural. She always dressed in quiet colors, brown or steel, and very plainly. She was noted as a good neighbor, and was never so happy as when making others happy. Her home was built in the old Elizabethan style, and the wooden beams of the ceiling could be seen in every room. Over the fire-place in the dining-room was carved the motto, “East or west, home is best.” Miss Mulock was greatly interested in all charities, but one particularly occupied her heart and hand; this was the Royal College for the Blind in London. She would send out invitations to the children to come to a strawberry party in the groves and hayfields around her house, and then she would make them delightfully happy. Mr. Craik would meet them with carriages and wagons, for their home was ten or twelve miles from the station, and then the three, Mr. and Mrs. Craik and Dorothy, would try to crowd into this one day enjoyment enough to last the children for many days.

  One evening in 1843, Mrs. Hall brought up to me to introduce a tall slender girl of seventeen, with graceful mien and fine grey eyes that, once seen, were not to be forgotten. They always seemed to be looking out on objects more serene than those before her. This was Dinah Maria Mulock, then a young aspirant, full of hero-worship of the great and good of every order, and destined to be known as the author of “John Halifax, Gentleman,” and one of the most successful novelists of her day. I lost sight of her for a time, but some two or three years later we became very intimate. She consulted me about adopting literature as an earnest pursuit, and I had seen such indications of her genius that I gave her the warmest encouragement. There was something very interesting about her, and she had the faculty of quickly making friends.

  An over-tall and in younger days somewhat spindly woman, not beautiful, but good, the goodness flavouring all her writings.

  After lunch Mrs. Craik made me walk in the garden with her, and inquired more closely into the particulars of this strange illness; she encouraged and comforted me greatly. She was tall, and though white-haired, very beautiful still [1868], I thought. As we walked she bent her head (covered with the Highland blue bonnet) over mine, and as she clasped my shoulders within her arm, I could see her hand laid upon my breast, as if to soothe it; it was the loveliest hand I ever saw; the shape so perfect, the skin so white and soft. We spoke French together; she was interested about France, and liked talking of its people and customs. Before we left she asked me to write to her, and offered to render me any service I might require.

John Halifax, Gentleman, 1856

  Time has not aged it; it still wears the smile of youth; and I for one believe that its mission will not be fulfilled until youths and maidens of our day and nation read it with as much relish and feel it with as much intensity as did our English cousins some thirty years or more ago.

  That Dinah Maria Mulock Craik has been known for thirty years as “the author of ‘John Halifax’” does not imply that she was a woman of one book, or even of only one book that was popular. After her first great effort, she gave us in swift succession novels, stories, verses and essays, full of sense and strength and often of great charm…. A strong desire seizes us to read the book again, to try to discover once more the great charm it held at one time for so large a world of readers. And yet we hesitate. What book is great enough to stand the test of thirty years? The strong impression is pretty sure to be weakened, and we don’t want it to be weakened. Let us remember it always as we do now, vaguely; but tenderly; for “the author of ‘John Halifax’” is dead. And yet curiosity overmasters tenderness. With irresistible impulse we seek out the little dusty old-fashioned volume, and turn its pages reverently but curiously. Yes, it suffers necessarily a little from the lapse of time: it is not quite realistic enough to satisfy us now; the excellent John has too few faults, the admirable Ursula, seems, alas! a little of a prig; the disputed governess, Miss Silver, does not live or move or have any being at all, certainly she fails to charm; and one need only compare the brothers’ quarrel with that described by Mrs. Oliphant, and now raging in the pages of The Atlantic, to feel that the more modern style, in becoming more realistic, has only gained in strength and flavor, and is actually less tame than the more imaginative efforts of thirty years ago. There is a falsetto tone in the book, of sentiment not exactly morbid, and yet to the more modern taste not exactly healthful. But still it remains what ladies call “a beautiful story.”

  She did not, however, assume her true place in fiction until the publication of “John Halifax, Gentleman,” a work which attained instant and great popularity, and which has had many imitators, the sincerest flattery according to the proverb, which can be bestowed. This work, which relates the history of a good man’s life and love, has but little incident, and no meretricious attractions, but attained the higher triumph of securing the public attention and sympathy by its pure and elevated feeling, fine perception of character, and subdued but admirable literary power. Miss Mulock has placed herself at the head of one division of the army of novelists. She has also added attraction to more than one landscape, throwing an interest to many readers over the little town of Tewkesbury for instance, with which the scene of John Halifax was identified, which has brought many pilgrims, we believe, to that place, not only from other parts of England, but from the other great continent across the seas where fiction has even more importance and its scenes more interest than among ourselves.

  The enormous hold which, ever since its first appearance in 1857, “John Halifax” has had on a great portion of the English-speaking public, is due to the lofty elevation of its tone, its unsullied purity and goodness, combined with a great freshness, which appeals to the young and seems to put them and the book in touch with each other.

  It is one of the most agreeable specimens of improved puritanism in modern England, and holds its ground as one of the productions of a more refined and entertaining literature. The sincere piety that it breathed is not obtrusive, and some of the characters give evidence of real literary talent. In the distant future her name will perhaps be mentioned by the side of George Eliot.

General

  A young Irish authoress of great promise. She has already given to the world several novels that have obtained decided success. The best of these is “Olive,” a very charming work…. The author of “Olive” holds a warm place in the heart of young lady novel-readers, and she has an opportunity of holding a very high rank among popular writers.

  Her traits as a writer are intensely feminine; the scenes and characters she describes are minutely, faithfully depicted, but in a diffuse style. Her poems have genuine religious feeling, and are graceful and refined in expression.

  Faith in God and faith in man were the secret of her influence. She made no parade of this, but the reader will easily discover that she holds him by all that is good in himself and by her own faith in goodness. She has left many pictures of the struggle against poverty, error, and misconception, of truth that is great and must prevail, of goodness that stands fast for ever and ever. Then, again, she wrote plain, simple English. She never used a long word if a short one would do as well, and she never took a foreign word that has an equivalent in her own language. Clearness, directness, simplicity, counted for much in her success as an author. It would be a fruitless task to say what she has not, and what she is not. Deficiencies, easily detected, are all atoned for by direct insight, which some would not hesitate to call genius. The books upon which Mrs. Craik’s fame will rest were written many years ago, but she has always been able and willing to say an influential word in a good cause, and to write for a large circle of readers.

  Though lacking in the higher qualities of true poetry, imagination, passion, breadth of experience, and depth of emotion, there is enough true feeling and human interest in many of her poems to entitle them to recognition in these pages, and give her a true if not a very exalted place in any representative anthology of the verse of her countrywomen. “Philip, My King,” the first high poem in either volume, ranked among her own favourites, and has, perhaps, been the most often quoted of her verses. “A Silly Song,” too, and “A Christmas Carol” are given in an anthology for which her own selection of her own work was asked. The ballad “In Swanage Bay,” which is not included in her last volume, has none the less been very popular as a recitation, and shows ability to write a simple and touching story in verse.

  She never posed as a brilliant, impassioned writer of stories which tell of wrongs, or crimes, or great mental conflicts. In her novels there is no dissection of character, no probing into the moral struggles of the human creature. Her teaching holds high the standard of duty, patience, and the unquestioning belief that all that God wills is well…. She was by no means what is termed a literary woman. She was not a great reader; and although much praise is due to the efforts she made to improve herself, judged by the present standard, her education remained very defective. That she lacked the fire of genius is true, but it is no less true that she was gifted with great imaginative ability and the power of depicting ordinary men and women leading upright, often noble lives.