-If there ever was a woman thoroughly like her name, it was Agatha Bowen. She was good, in the first place-right good at heart, though with a slight external roughness (like the sound of the g in her name), which took away all sentimentalism. Then the vowels-the three broad rich a's-which no one can pronounce with nimini-pimini closed lips-how thoroughly they answered to her character!-a character in the which was nothing small, mean, cramped, or crooked. But if we go on unfolding her in this way, there will not be the slightest use in writing her history, or that of one in whom her life is beautifully involved and enclosed-as every married woman's should be- He was still in clouded mystery-an individual yet to be; and two other individuals had been "talking him over," feminine-fashion, in Miss Agatha Bowen's drawing-room, much to that lady's amusement and edification. For, being moderately rich, she had her own suite of rooms in the house where she boarded; and having no mother-sorrowful lot for a girl of nineteen!-she sometimes filled her drawing-room with very useless and unprofitable acquaintances. These two married ladies-one young, the other old-Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Thornycroft-had been for the last half-hour vexing their very hearts out to find Agatha a husband-a weakness which, it must be confessed, lurks in the heart of almost every married lady.
Author
Dinah Maria Craik (born Dinah Maria Mulock, also often credited as Miss Mulock or Mrs. Craik) was an English novelist and poet. She was born at Stoke-on-Trent and brought up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. After the death of her mother in 1845, Dinah Maria Mulock settled in London about 1846. She was determined to obtain a livelihood by her pen, and, beginning with fiction for children, advanced steadily until placed in the front rank of the women novelists of her day. She is best known for the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1856). She followed this with A Life for a Life (1859), which she considered to be the best of her novels, and several other works. She also published some poetry, narratives of tours in Ireland and Cornwall, and A Woman's Thoughts about Women (1858). She married George Lillie Craik a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the publishing house of Macmillan & Company, and nephew of George Lillie Craik, in 1864. They adopted a foundling baby girl, Dorothy, in 1869. At Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, while in a period of preparation for Dorothy's wedding, she died of heart failure on 12 October 1887, aged 61. Her last words were reported to have been: "Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!" Her final book, An Unknown Country, was published by Macmillan in 1887, the year of her death.
