Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850–1887)

Isabella Valancy Crawford born in Dublin, Ireland, to a family that emigrated to Canada when she was about 10 years old. They lived in a succession of Ontario villages, including in the Kawartha Lakes district, before moving to Peterborough in 1869. She was educated at home and was widely read in the classics and in French and Italian literature. In Lakefield, she got to know the writers Susanna Moodie and her sister Catherine Parr Traill. Crawford became one of the first important women poets in Canada and one of the first Canadians to make a living as a freelance writer. Her first published poem, "A Vesper Star," appeared in The Toronto Mail on Christmas Eve, 1873. After her father died in 1875, Isabella moved with her sister Emma and their widowed mother to Toronto, where she supported them all on the sale of her poems, short stories, and serialized novels and novellas to Toronto newspapers and to magazines in the USA. The one collection of poetry published in her lifetime, Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems (1884), sold poorly.

It was only years later, after the publication of The Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford (1905), edited by J.W. Garvin, and Katherine Hale's biography Isabella Valancy Crawford (1923) that she gained recognition. Renewed interest in her work resulted in more publications, including forgotten manuscripts and critical articles.