CRAWFORD, FRANCIS MARION Ameri can author, was born at Bagni di Lucca, Italy, Aug. 2, 1854, being the son of the American sculptor, Thomas Crawford (q.v.), and the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the American poet. The cosmo politanism of his work is foreshadowed by his early training at St. Paul's school, Concord, N.H. ; Trinity college, Cambridge ; Heidel berg, and Rome. In 1879 he went to India, where he studied San skrit and edited the Allahabad Indian Herald. Returning to Amer ica he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard university for a year, contributed to various periodicals, and in 1882 produced his first novel, Mr. Isaacs, a brilliant sketch of modern Anglo-Indian life mingled with a touch of Oriental mystery. This book had an immediate success, and its author's promise was confirmed by the publication of Dr. Claudius (1883) . After a brief residence in N.Y. city and Boston and travelling in Turkey and elsewhere, Craw ford in 1883 returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home and about which he wrote numerous novels, including the excellent series Saracinesca (1887), Sant' Ilario (1889) and Don Orsino (1892). His interest in his adopted country is also revealed in his historical works, Ave Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the South ('900)—renamed Sicily, Calabria and Malta in 19o4— and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905) , in which his intimate knowledge of local Italian history combines with the romanticist's imaginative faculty to excellent effect. He was exceptionally pro lific and treated with vividness and accuracy widely varying pe riods and countries. Among the most celebrated of his novels are : A Roman Singer (1884), A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886), Paul Patoff (1887), The Witch of Prague (1891), Via Crucis (1899), In the Palace of the King (1900), and The White Sister (19o9). In his American novels, such as An American Politician (1884), he was probably least successful. Nevertheless, he was always a gifted narrator, and his romances, with their picturesque backgrounds and dramatic characterizations, were very popular. His belief that the novel should be "a pocket-stage" for entertainment only, he set forth in The Novel—What Is It? (1893) . It was but natural, therefore, that A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1890) should be effective on the stage, and that in 1902 an original play from his pen, Francesca da Rimini, should be produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt. He died at Sorrento April 9, 1909.
For criticism and bibliography see F. J. Cooper, Some American Story Tellers (1911) .