GEORGE LILLIE

See also:

• CRAIK, DINAH MARIA (1826-1887)
• GEORGE LILLIE CRAIK (1798-1866)

CRAIK (1798-1866)  , English man of letters, the son of a schoolmaster, was born at Kennoway, Fifeshire, in 1798 . He studied at the university of St Andrews with the intention of entering the church, but, altering his plans, became the editor of a local newspaper, and went to London in 1824 to devote himself to literature . He became connected with a short-lived literary paper called the Verulam; in 1831 he published his Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties among the works of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; he contributed a considerable number of biographical and historical articles to the Penny Cyclopaedia; and he edited the Pictorial History of England, himself writing much of the work . In 1844 he published his History of Literature and Learning in England from the Norman Conquest to the Present Time, illustrated by extracts . Craik is best known for his abridged version of this work, The History of English Literature and the English Language (1861), which passed through several editions . In the next year appeared his Spenser and his Poetry, an abstract of Spenser's poems, with historical and biographical notes and frequent quotations; and in 1847 his Bacon, his Writings and his Philosophy, a work of a similar kind . The two last-mentioned works appeared among Knight's Weekly Volumes . Two years later Craik obtained the chair of history and English literature at Queen's College, Belfast, a position which he held till his death, which took place on the 25th of June 1866 . He had married Miss Jeannette Dempster (d . 1856) in 1826, and his daughter, Georgiana Marion Craik (Mrs A . W . May), wrote over thirty novels, of which Lost and Won (1859) was the best .

Besides the works already noticed, Craik published the History of

British Commerce from the Earliest Times (1844), Romance of the Peerage (1848–1850) and The English of Shakespeare (1856) .