George L. Craik

Artist Info

George L. CraikKennoway, Scotland, 1798 - 1866, Belfast

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n88100929

Craik, George Lillie (1798–1866), literary scholar, was born at Kennoway, Fife, on 18 April 1798. He was the son of the Revd William Craik, the schoolmaster of Kennoway, and his wife, Patterson Lilias. In 1812 Craik entered the University of St Andrews, where he studied philosophy, theology, and literature, winning prizes for his work in mathematics, grammar, theology, and Hebrew. He then taught in the grammar school at St Andrews (later Madras College), worked as a private tutor, and became the editor of a local newspaper, The Star. On 19 October 1826 he married Janet, the daughter of Cathcart Dempster of St Andrews. They had one son and three daughters, one of whom, Georgiana Marion, became a prolific novelist. Craik was strongly built, with brown hair and a red, freckled, bespectacled face. He was an ambitious man, determined to make his way in the world of learning and letters. Having first visited London in 1824, he decided to settle there in 1826. He gave lectures on poetry at Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, and Liverpool on his journey southwards.

In London, Craik and his family lived in a modest house called Vine Cottage, in Cromwell Lane, Old Brompton. He wrote a good deal for Charles Knight, the publisher and popular educator. His first notable book for Knight was The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties (2 vols., 1830–31), which was reprinted in various editions. Dickens, who possessed a copy, has Tony Weller allude to it in Pickwick Papers (ch. 33). Typical ‘difficulties’ that Craik discusses are humble station and obscure origin (as experienced by Haydn and Ben Jonson), the soldiering and sailing lives (Descartes and Captain Cook), extreme poverty (Erasmus), and exile and imprisonment (Ovid and Sir Walter Ralegh). Other works that Craik wrote for Knight's Library of Entertaining Knowledge were The New Zealanders (1830) and Paris and its Historical Scenes (1831). He was acquainted in London with Leigh Hunt, John Forster, and other writers, and from 1835 onwards he frequently visited the Carlyles at their house in Chelsea. Carlyle, who had read Craik's book on Paris, described him in a letter to John Stuart Mill as ‘a man limited; but honest, and singularly healthy, and even robust, within his limits. He cannot be brilliant, but he can be decided, clear, and even emphatic’ (Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, 8.312).

During the 1830s and 1840s Craik continued to write and edit for Charles Knight. With Charles MacFarlane and others, he produced The Pictorial History of England (originally published in parts, 1838–41, and then in other editions). The History of British Commerce, extracted from this, was published separately in 1844. He wrote Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England (6 vols., 1844–5; and subsequent editions), and thorough surveys of selected Renaissance authors, with Spenser and his Poetry (3 vols., 1845) and Bacon: his Writings and his Philosophy (3 vols., 1846–7). Craik also contributed to Knight's Penny Magazine and Penny Cyclopaedia.

A turning point in Craik's life was his appointment in 1849 as the professor of English literature and history at the newly established Queen's College, Belfast, where he was a popular and conscientious member of the academic staff. As well as teaching conventional university courses, Craik, like his colleagues, gave extramural classes, such as a course in 1852 for working men and townspeople on English writers. He was an examiner for the Indian Civil Service in 1859 and 1862. His publications at this period in his career included The Romance of the Peerage (4 vols., 1848–50), Outlines of the History of the English Language (1851), The English of Shakespeare, Illustrated by a Philological Commentary on Julius Caesar (1856), and the Representation of Minorities (1859). Above all, there was his Manual of English Literature (1862), which shows Craik's qualities at their best, as it systematically presents solid, clearly written information. It went through many editions, and its status as a standard history was confirmed by its inclusion in Everyman's Library in 1909.

Craik, whose wife had died in 1856, suffered a stroke in February 1866 while lecturing and died on 25 June 1866. He was buried at Holywood, near Belfast. A bust was placed in the entrance hall of Queen's College.

Donald Hawes

Sources

DNB · GM, 4th ser., 2 (1866), 265–6 · MS note by Lord Cockburn on copy of Certificates in favour of Mr George L. Craik, 1824, BL · The collected letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. C. R. Sanders, K. J. Fielding, and others, [30 vols.] (1970–) · T. W. Moody and J. C. Beckett, Queen's, Belfast, 1845–1949: the history of a university, 2 vols. (1959) · The letters of Charles Dickens, ed. M. House, G. Storey, and others, 1 (1965) · m. reg. Scot. · bap. reg. Scot. · bap. reg. Scot. [Lilias, Patterson]