Novelist. According to Dictionary of National Biography, received a good education; according to other accounts, a very defective one. In 1865 married George LilIie Craik, partner in publishing firm of Macmillan. Contributed to Sharpe's, Macmillan's, Good Words, Once a Week, Comhill, Good Words for the Young, Contemporary Review, and other periodicals. Was one of contributors to Victoria Regia. Published more than fifty works—novels, collections of stories, books for the young, essays, poems. Best known as author of John Halifax, Gentleman, 1856. An 1891 supplement AlIibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-1871), stated: "Her books are said to be more widely read than those of any other novelist except Dickens". According to George Eliot, was "read only by novel readers, pure and simple, never by people of high culture" (Letters, Ill, 302). In 1864 granted Civil List pension of £60 a year as "Authoress of 'John Halifax, Gentleman' and other well-known works of fiction" (Colles, Literature and the Pension List).

On March 8 1855, Dickens wrote to Miss Burdett-Coutts: "I think I have just got the best Ghost story (sent by a lady for Household Words) that ever was written, and with an idea in it remarkably new. My hand is stayed for the moment, however, by an apprehension that the lady cannot have written it. It is so very clever, that I think (though I never saw or heard of it) it must have been written by some wild Frenchman and I am trying to find out". During the following week, Dickens must have satisfied himself that the author of the story was really Miss Mulock and not "some wild Frenchman". On March 17, he sent Miss Burdett-Coutts the proofs; saying that she might perhaps "like to read the great ghost story before it comes out" (Heart of Charles Dickens, ed. Johnson, p. 293).

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

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography