Novelist

Biography

Born the daughter of a nonconformist minister in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, Dinah Mulock took her mother and siblings to London and supported them by writing novels, the most successful of which, John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), enabled her eventually to build Corner House in Shortlands, Kent, where she spent the rest of her life. She married George Lillie Craik, of the Macmillan publishing firm, in 1865; and they adopted a daughter. She published three volumes of poetry: Poems (1859), Songs of Our Youth, and Thirty Years: Being Poems Old and New (1881). Sally Mitchell has written the most recent biography, Dinah Mulock Craik (Boston: Twayne, 1983; PR 4517 M57 Robarts Library).

  • Mitchell, Sally. “Craik , Dinah Maria (1826-1887).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
Biography

Born February 11, 1802, in Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia Maria Child made her living as a novelist, story-story writer, schoolteacher, editor, writer for children, and controversialist. Her first notorious work, a novel entitled Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times (1824), celebrated interracial marriage. Later she published books for and on women, including The Frugal Housewife (1829) The Mother's Book (1831), The Girl's Own Book (1831), and The History of the Condition of Women (1835), and created and edited the first major children's journal, Juvenile Miscellany (1826-1834), in which she brought out some of her most memorable poetry. Her An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) and editorship of the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841-43) established her as one of the century's great abolitionists. Her poetry collections were

  • The Coronal (Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1832)
  • Flowers for Children, 3 vols. (New York: C. S. Francis, 1844-47), later published separately in 1869
  • Autumnal Leaves (New York: C. S. Francis, 1856)
  • Looking towards Sunset (1864)

She finally settled in Wayland, Mass. Her marriage to David Lee Child in 1828 lasted until his death in 1874. She died October 20, 1880. See also

  • Baer, Helene G. The Heart is Like Heaven: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964).
  • The Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, 1817-1880, ed. Patricia G. Holland, Milton Meltzer, and Francine Krasno (New York: Kraus, 1980).
  • Osborne, William S. Lydia Maria Child (Boston: Twayne, 1980). PS 1293 Z5 O8 Robarts Library