Dinah Mulock Craik Novelist

Dinah Maria Craik (Nee Mulock) was a well-known and prolific author of the 19^th Century, who made a good living with her writing.  As the Victorian age progressed, writing became a respectable career for women. It could be done at home.  It did not require much formal education and as Trollope later said novelists were permitted a good deal of latitude in getting practical details “right”.

She was born in Stoke on Trent, and her father was a minister of a non-conformist congregation.  However he was unstable and difficult and the family were not well off.  Born in 1826, she moved to London around the age of 20, knowing she would have to make her own way in the world. 

She was friendly with Charles Mudie who founded the "Mudies’ Circulating Library" which was a very successful business.  It had great influence on teh reading habits of the Victorian public.  Books were expensive; so many middle class people got them out of a library, borrowing them a volume at a time and paying a small subscription.  Mudie only took books which were geared towards the respectable middle classes, so immorality and “risk taking” were weeded out of the reading matter he supplied.  

Dinah wrote short stories for the young and then began to produce 3 volume conventional novels.  She did not have any problem with the restrictions of publishing novels that fit with the Victorian moral conventions, but she was independent as a woman and took pride in her ability to make her own living rather than needing a man to keep her or to validate her in society.  Other novelists such as Mary Braddon, or George Eliot, who had “improper” private lives, or who wanted to write more serious novels which did not always abide by the strict rules of Victorian fiction, had more problems. Eliot complained about the “crowd pleasing” types of novels that women wrote, such as the “silver fork” ones which were a bit like Georgette Heyer - in that they were set in High Society... and were in Eliot’s view “silly”.   She also complained about the sensation novels which became best sellers.

 Another novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who was happily married, naturally “proper” and religious had some difficulties with the style of the popular novels of the time, such as very long books which if published as a serial needed exciting events and cliff hangers that did not suit Gaskell’s quieter talents.

Dinah Craik wrote several works in her first 10 years in London. She was proud of being able to support herself and felt that it was wrong to educate girls to do nothing but marry, when it was often difficult for a girl of the upper or middle classes to find a husband.

In 1857 she wrote the massive best seller that made her famous “John Halifax Gentleman”.  It was a very Victorian tale of a young boy from a poor background who has a lucky break, being taken in by a well to do Quaker, and being given a start in his business.  (The tradesman’s son Phineas is an invalid and unable to take over his father’s business).

Phineas feels sorry for John –and persuades his fatter to help him out.  John proves that although he is not from a rich or grand background he is a natural “gentleman” and he soon take advantage of being given a job by old Abel Fletcher.  In the Samuel Smiles tradition, he works his way up, displays a talent for mechanics and business, is rigidly honest, and eventually takes over the business. 

It was a novel that came along “just at the right time” for making a young businessman a hero.  The middle classes were on the rise, gradually becoming leaders in their communities and the wealthiest people in the country as a whole.  Their political and social influence was now equal with that of the landed upper classes. Previously novel heroes had generally been “Gentlemen” of independent wealth or in the “genteel professions” i.e. owning land, being in the military or the law or clergy.  Now a man with his own business, who has worked his way up from poverty, was the hero and it appealed to the public.

Craik’s novel wasn’t that popular with critics, and most readers nowadays would agree that John is a tiresome “ultra-good” hero.   He has no real faults.  He does not drink gamble or womanise and he doesn’t even waste time!!

He is always worthily busy, working to improve his situation.  He falls in love with a well-bred heiress but does not marry her till he is moderately prosperous.  He has disputes over business and social issues, with upper class neighbours but always wins.  His problems are pretty much solved before they have begun to give him trouble.

The upper classes are generally portrayed as selfish, vicious, weak and “on their way out”.  So it is hardly surprising that the novel was popular with middle class readers.  John is good to his workers, and although he has come up from the poorer classes, they don’t resent his being successful.  He is plainly a “natural gentleman” and bound to do well and become rich and powerful.

Craik made good money from this and other novels though her later novels gradually become more didactic and less successful, though they still sold well.  However her life in general was a happy one.  In her 30s, having been contentedly single for a long time, she fell in love with George Lillie Craik, a young man several years her junior who was working in publishing. Craik lost a leg in a train accident and she nursed him, marring him in 1865.  She continued to write and to help with his work, as he became a partner in the famous publishing firm of Macmillan’s.  But soon after their marriage she adopted a foundling child, a little baby girl whom she named Dorothy.  Her adoptive daughter and her husband were a source of great happiness to her. 

They lived in Bromley, near London, and her busy happy life went on for several years till she died of heart failure at the age of 61 during preparations for her daughter’s wedding