Catherine Ann Crowe (née Stevens; 20 September 1790 – 14 June 1872) was an English novelist, a writer of social and supernatural stories, and a playwright.
[1] Crowe's two plays, the verse tragedy Aristodemus (1838) and the melodrama The Cruel Kindness (1853), both had historical themes paralleling her own family problems.
Though set in middle-class life, they had complicated, sensational plots, while also commenting on the predicaments of Victorian women brought up in seclusion to be mistreated by those men who did not subscribe to standards of decent behaviour.
The play Susan Hopley; or, The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl, adapted from Crowe's novel by George Dibdin Pitt, opened at the Royal Victoria Theatre in 1841 and became a long-running success.
[6] Crowe also wrote a number of books for children, including versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin for young readers, Pippie's Warning; or, Mind Your Temper (1848),[7] The Story of Arthur Hunter and his First Shilling (1861) and The Adventures of a Monkey (1862).