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Olive
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Olive - Background Information
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There is also a free Kindle version on the US Amazon site.
I would have liked to read a physical copy, but our library doesn't have it and my book budget is limited.
Dinah Maria Craik (born Dinah Maria Mulock, often credited as Miss Mulock or Mrs. Craik; 20 April 1826 – 12 October 1887) was an English novelist and poet.
Mulock was born at Stoke-on-Trent to Dinah and Thomas Mulock and raised in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, where her father was minister of a small independent nonconformist congregation. Her childhood and early youth were affected by his unsettled fortunes, but she gained a good education from various quarters and felt called to be a writer.
She arrived in London about 1846, at much the same time as two friends, Alexander Macmillan and Charles Edward Mudie. Introduced by Camilla Toulmin to Westland Marston, she rapidly made friends in London and found great encouragement for her stories for the young. In 1865, she married George Lillie Craik, a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the publishers Macmillan & Company, and nephew of George Lillie Craik. They adopted a foundling baby girl, Dorothy, in 1869.
At Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, while preparing for Dorothy's wedding, Craik died of heart failure on 12 October 1887, aged 61. Her last words were said to have been: "Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!"
Mulock's early success began with the novel Cola Monti (1849). In the same year she produced her first three-volume novel, The Ogilvies, to great success. It was followed in 1850 by Olive, then by The Head of the Family in 1851 and Agatha's Husband in 1853, in which the author used her recollections of East Dorset. Mulock published the fairy story Alice Learmont in 1852, and collected numerous short stories from periodicals under the title of Avillion and other Tales in 1853. A similar collection appeared in 1857 under the title Nothing New.
Well established in public favour as an author, Mulock took a cottage at Wildwood, North End, Hampstead and joined an extensive social circle. Her personal attractions were at the time were considerable; people kindly ascribed to her simple cordiality, staunch friendliness and thorough goodness of heart. In 1857 she published the work by which she is mainly remembered, John Halifax, Gentleman, a presentation of the ideals of English middle-class life.