Dinah Craik

Life

Mulock was born at Stoke-on-Trent to Dinah and Thomas Mulock and raised in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, where her father was then minister of a small independent non-conformist congregation. Her childhood and early youth were much affected by his unsettled fortunes, but she obtained a good education from various quarters and felt called to be a writer.

She came to London about 1846, much at the same time as two friends, Alexander Macmillan and Charles Edward Mudie. Introduced by Camilla Toulmin to Westland Marston, she rapidly made friends in London, and found great encouragement for the stories for the young. In 1865 she married George Lillie Craik a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the publishing house of Macmillan & Company, and nephew of George Lillie Craik. 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!" Her final book, An Unknown Country, was published by Macmillan in 1887, the year of her death. Dorothy married Alexander Pilkington in 1887 but they divorced in 1911 and she went on to marry Captain Richards of Macmine Castle. She and Alexander had just one son John Mulock Pilkington. John married Freda Roskelly and they had a son and daughter.

Works

Mulock's early success began with the novel Cola Monti (1849), and in the same year she produced her first three-volume novel, The Ogilvies, to great success. It was followed in 1850 by Olive, then by The Head of the Family in 1851 and Agatha's Husband in 1853, in which the author used her recollections of East Dorset. Mulock published the fairy story Alice Learmont in 1852, and collected numerous short stories from periodicals under the title of Avillion and other Tales in 1853. A similar collection appeared in 1857 under the title of Nothing New.

Thoroughly established in public favour as a successful author, Mulock took a cottage at Wildwood, North End, Hampstead, and joined an extensive social circle. Her personal attractions were at this period of her life considerable, and people kindly judged her simple cordiality, staunch friendliness, and thorough goodness of heart. In 1857 she published the work by which she will be principally remembered, John Halifax, Gentleman, a presentation of the ideals of English middle-class life. Mulock's next important work, A Life for a Life (1859), made more money and was perhaps at the time more widely read than John Halifax, and was followed by Mistress and Maid (1863) and Christian's Mistake (1865), followed by didactic works such as A Woman's Thoughts about Women and Sermons out of Church. Another collection, titled The Unkind Word and Other Stories, included a scathing criticism of Benjamin Heath Malkin for overworking his son Thomas, a child prodigy who died at seven. Later on, Craik returned to more fanciful tales and achieved a great success with The Little Lame Prince (1874). In 1881 she published a collection of her earlier poems under the title Poems of Thirty Years, New and Old; some, such as Philip my King addressed to her godson Philip Bourke Marston and Douglas, Douglas, Tender and True achieved a wide popularity.

Reception

Richard Garnett holds that "the genuine passion that filled her early works of fiction had not unnaturally faded out of middle life," replaced by didacticism and helping to increase self-awareness. Garnett judges Craik's poetry as "a woman's poems, tender, domestic, and sometimes enthusiastic, always genuine song, and the product of real feeling."