Anne Grey

The Novel

Harriet Cradock's first novel, Anne Grey, a Novel, Edited by the Author of ‘Granby’, appeared in 1834. The novel is not a ‘fashionable’ one, but a lively and unexaggerated tale of personal relationships in upper-middle-class English society.


The Author

Harriet Cradock (1809–1884), novelist, was born on 18 June 1809 at Armitage, near Lichfield. She was the half-sister of the novelist Thomas Henry Lister and a maid of honour to Queen Victoria for six years. She left the queen's service to marry her cousin, the Reverend Edward Cradock (1810–1886), on 9 July 1844. Harriet Cradock's other novels include Hulse House (1860), John Smith (1878), and Rose (1881). She died on 16 June 1884 at her home, Cowley Grange, near Oxford.


Contemporary Reviews

American Quarterly Review, 1835— This novel belongs to the same class with those of Miss Austen. It is full of lively and graphic descriptions of domestic scenes, and of dialogues rather more remarkable for naturalness and naivete, than for piquancy or wit. The characters are cleverly drawn, and well sustained; and the interest is kept up to the end of the book.


Museum of foreign literature, science and art, January 1835— "Anne Grey," edited by the author of Granby, is understood to be the work of the editor's sister, Miss Lister, a young lady of twenty. The works of Mr. Lister are well known and appreciated; "Dacre," by Mrs. Lister, is one of the favourite novels of the last season; and "Anne Grey" is eminently successful in the delineation of feminine character, feminine thoughts and feelings. It is not the least singular sign of these novel times that three excellent novelists should be found in the same family.