He was born at Little Duchrae, Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Galloway, on 24 September 1859, the illegitimate son of dairymaid Annie Crocket.

He was raised by his Cameronian grandparents on the tenanted farm until 1867 when the family moved to Cotton Street, Castle Douglas (later fictionalised as Cairn Edward).

[1] He travelled throughout Europe as a tutor between the years 1879 and 1881 returning to study for the ministry at Edinburgh's New College.

He played a large part in gaining justice for the relatives of victims in the Mauricewood Pit Disaster of 1889.

He published a volume of poetry, Dulce Cor (Latin: Sweet Heart), under the pseudonym Ford Brereton in 1886.

There followed extensive publications across a range of journals, magazines, and periodicals in the UK and America and most of his 60+ serial works were subsequently published in novel form through James Clarke and Co, Hodder & Stoughton, and others.

[1] His contemporary J. M. Barrie had already created a demand for stories in Lowland Scots,[5] with his sketches of Thrums in the late 1880s.

Crockett's breakthrough year occurred in 1894 when T. Fisher Unwin published no fewer than four of his works, The Raiders,[6] The Lilac Sunbonnet,[7] The PlayActress[8] and Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills.

His fellow late-nineteenth-century novelist George Gissing for instance found his novel The Raiders "wearisome".

[9] His early work was dismissed by some contemporary critics as Kailyard and it was a label that has proved hard to shift.

Given the ephemerality of magazine publication it is impossible to give a complete list of all his serialised work or published short stories.