Macready, Catherine Frances Birch I Miss Macready l, 1834–1869, verse writer; daughter of William Charles Macready. Did charitable work among the poor. Died at sea on voyage from Madeira to England. Author of Leaves from the Olive Mount, 1860, dedicated to her father; Cowl and Cap; or, The Rival Churches, 1865; Devotional Lays, 1868.

     
      As an intimate friend of Macready's, Dickens was on friendly terms with the members of the Macready family. His letters contain affectionate mentions of Catherine Macready – "little Kate," "Katey," "Katie."
      Miss Macready's H.W. contributions were apparently sent to Dickens by her father. Concerning the first, Dickens wrote to him that he would be "truly delighted" to publish it in H.W.; the second, which he liked "very much indeed," he agreed with Macready in holding "a great advance upon the first" (July 8, Aug. 8, 1856). Miss Macready or her father had evidently intended the poems to be gratuitous contributions. Dickens insisted on paying for them. "Katey's case," he wrote, was to be no "different from Adelaide Procter's." 
      In the Office Book, Miss Procter is recorded as author of "The Shadow of the Hand" [XIV, 39–39. July 26, 1856]; the "Procter" is marked out and substituted by "Macready."

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Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971