Alice Corkran

She also edited first the Bairn's Annual and then The Girl's Realm, being the founder of that magazine's Guild of Service and Good Fellowship, which maintained a cot at the Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, among other charitable works.

Her father began life as a dramatist and had a play, The Painter of Italy, well received at the Theatre Royal, Dublin on 9 March 1840, but by that time he was already in Paris.

[clarification needed][11] When the family returned to London, her house in Bloomsbury became a rendezvous for many eminent men and women of letters.

She was the playmate of Robert Browning's father, and she used to accompany the old man on his rambles along the quays in search of subjects to sketch.

Of Bessie Lang reviewers said: Down the Snow Stairs also attracted a favourable critical response: After 1890, all of Corkran's longer works were non-fiction.

[note 4] Legend for the column headings: Margery Merton's Girlhood is available online at Google Books, and Meg's Friend as a Gutenberg eText.

The Morning Post said of the book: "Miss Alice Corkran has written a tale sufficiently full of mystery and horror to satisfy the most voracious appetite.

Such ample evidence of this is adduced, that the unhappy wife of the last owner, in a state bordering on delirium, burns the house and its contents to the ground, thus lifting the curse which she feels has been laid upon it.

The annual was well received with the Freeman's Journal saying: "This is one of the most well-arranged and interesting children's books that we have seen for a long time, containing little stories of almost every class, and an original song with music.

The guild supported a cot at the Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, and also provided a scholarship to the Royal College of Music.

[51][52] Corkran had a health scare in October 1892 when she was run over by a brougham in Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London.

Her leg was badly injured and she suffered from shock, and recovered only slowly, so that it was the end of the year before she could resume literary work.

[54] She was still living with Whiteing (who had separated from his wife) at the time of the 1911 census where she described her position in the house as inmate, which the enumerator corrected to the approved term boarder.

[55] Her sister Mary had married Barclay V. Head of the British Museum[56] and had one daughter, Alice Augusta Louisa, who was living with her father at the time of the 1911 census (immediately after her mother's death on 30 March 1911).