Catherine Crowe

Catherine Ann Crowe, née Stevens, (born 20 September 1790 in Borough Green, Kent, died 14 June 1872 in Folkestone), was an English novelist, story writer and playwright. Crowe was educated at home, spending most her childhood in Kent. She married an army officer, Major John Crowe (1783–1860). They had a son, John William (born 1823), but the marriage was an unhappy one, and when she met Sydney Smith and his family at Clifton, Bristol in 1828, she asked them for their help. Little is known about the next few years, but by 1838 she was separated from her husband, living in Edinburgh, and had made the acquaintance of several writers, including the impecunious Thomas de Quincey, and in London Harriet Martineau and William Makepeace...