Life
?1850-1920 [var. 1921; Bithia Mary Croker; née Sheppard]; b. Kilgefin,
Co. Roscommon; dg. Church of Ireland clergyman, b. Co. Roscommon; ed.
Rockferry, Cheshire, and Tours; married Lt.-Col. Croker of the Royal Scots
[var. Royal Munster Fusiliers, IF] travelled India and Burma; living in
London & Folkstone; 40 vols. of novels and short stories incl. Proper
Pride (1882), A Bird of Passage (1886); Beyond the Pale
(1897); A Nine Days’ Wonder (1905); The Youngest Miss Mowbray
(1906), and Lismoyle (1914); works reprinted in the 1920s.
JMC DIW IF SUTH OCIL
Works
Interference [new edn.] London: Chatto & Windus 1905), 2, vi, 312ppp. [continuing]
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Notes
Justin McCarthy,
Irish Literature (Washington 1904)., gives extract from ‘In the Kingdom of Kerry’.
JMC cites Diana Barrington; Mrs Jervis; Village Tales
and Jungle Tragedies; The Real Lady Hilda; Peggy of the
Bartons; Terence; A State Secret [n.dd.]
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), gives no bio-dates; lists A Bird of Passage [1886] (London: Chatto & Windus 1903); In the Kingdom of Kerry (London: Chatto & Windus 1896) [seven light and merry sketches of ‘poor folk’ (Baker)]; Beyond the Pale [1st edn.] (London: Chatto & Windus; NY: Fenno 1897) [girl compelled to train horses for living in counties; feudal peasantry sympathetically viewed]; Terence (London: Chatto & Windus 1899); Johanna [1903] (3rd edn. London: Methuen 1917) [peasant girl on way to Dublin used as slavey; release by her soldier boy returning]; A Nine Days’ Wonder (London: Methuen 1905) [girl raised in Irish cottage claimed as dg. of English peer; shocks and eventually takes society by storm]; Lismoyle, an Experiment in Ireland (London: Hutchinson 1914) [six month visit of English heiress to delapidated Irish big house]; Bridget (London: Hutchinson 1918) [beautiful, lovable, this girl with deplorable parents is courted by soldiers at Dublin dances and finally eludes poverty]; and mentions Interference (1894), and Two Masters (1890) as having scenes in Ireland.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), gives bio-dates as ?1860-1921 [sic]; calls her prolific and popular with circulating libraries; netting £2,000 for a novel in the 1920s; considered ‘fresh and wholesome’; m. Royals Scots officer and travelled to India and Burma, 14 yrs.; her fiction deals with upper class colonial life and shows itself sympathetic towards the Indians; romantic plots and heavily worked-in local descriptions; Proper Pride (Tinsley 1882) [Anglo-Indian life with Afghanistan episodes]; Pretty Miss Neville (1883) [a faithless coquette in Indian station of Mulkapore, ‘and a miss no more’, i.e., loses virginity]; Someone Else (1884) [a mishap following a mistaken kiss]; A Bird of Passage (1886) [colonial flirtation in the Andamans]; Interference (1891) [hunting foxes in Ireland and husbands in India]; Beyond the Pale (1897, ser. The Times weekly edn.) [set in Munster with Galling Jerry, a horsey Irish heroine.
Eggeley Books (Cat. No. 44) lists The Cat’s Paw (London: Chatto & Windus 1935), rpt., iv+343pp; Mr Jervis (London: Chatto & Windus 1897), new edn., iv+331pp.; Quicksands (London: Cassell 1916), vi, 343pp. Also, [The Youngest Miss Mowbray (London: Hurst and Blackett 1906), 316pp..
Belfast Central Library holds Beyond the Pale (1898); In the Kingdom of Kerry (1896); Interference (1892).
A press note attached to Beyond the Pale compares her to Charles
Lever; good old fashioned happy-marriage ending. [Library of BS.]
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)