Although now considered a leading 19th-century Canadian poet, Isabella Crawford achieved little
recognition during her lifetime. Born in Dublin, she immigrated to Canada with her family in the
1850s, eventually settling in North Douro, Ontario. Here she had the occasion to meet Catharine
Parr Traill before the family relocated to Peterborough. In 1875 her siblings and father died,
leaving Crawford and her invalid mother with scant financial resources.
To earn a living, Crawford sold her prose and poetry to newspapers. While some of her earlier
work appeared in the Favourite and the Toronto Mail, between 1875 and 1879 she
published only in American periodicals. Crawford and her mother relocated to Toronto, and in
1879 she began contributing to the Toronto Globe and the Toronto Evening
Telegram.
Crawford submitted her work to literary journals but her efforts were rejected, leaving her with no
choice but to publish in newspapers. In 1884, struggling to gain recognition, she used her own
money to publish "Old Spookses' Pass", "Malcolm's Katie" and Other Poems, a
collection of some of her best narrative poems. This collection received critical praise but sold
only 50 copies. Apart from newspapers, it was the only publication of Crawford's work during
her lifetime. With some difficulty, what remains of her work has been posthumously compiled
and published from newspapers and her surviving manuscripts.
Selected Works by Isabella Valancy Crawford
Papers
The existing Crawford manuscripts can be found in the Lorne Pierce Collection at the Queen's
University Archives, Kingston, Ontario.
Books of Prose or Poetry
-- The collected poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford. -- Edited by John W. Garvin with
an introduction by Ethelwyn Wetherald. -- Toronto : W. Briggs, c1905. -- 309 p.
-- Fairy tales of Isabella Valancy Crawford. -- Edited and with an introduction by Penny
Petrone. -- Ottawa : Borealis Press, c1977. -- 85 p. -- ISBN 0919594530
-- Selected stories of Isabella Valancy Crawford. -- Edited and with an introduction by
Penny Petrone. -- Ottawa : University of Ottawa Press, c1975. -- 90 p. -- ISBN 0776643355
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Isabella Valancy