F. Marion Crawford
1854–1909 · United States
American author, 1854–1909
Francis Marion Crawford was born in Bagni di Lucca, Italy, in 1854, the son of American sculptor Thomas Crawford. Though American by nationality, his education and life crossed several countries. He studied at St Paul’s School in Concord, Cambridge, Heidelberg and Rome, then went to India in 1879. There he studied Sanskrit and edited the Allahabad Indian Herald. His first novel, Mr Isaacs (1882), drew on Anglo-Indian life and the mystery surrounding it. After a period in New York and Boston, Crawford returned to Italy in 1883 and made his home there, writing novels set in the country whose landscapes and history he knew closely.
His work moved between contemporary society, historical fiction, romance and the uncanny. Saracinesca (1887) began a three-novel sequence; his historical writing includes Ave Roma Immortalis (1898) and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905). The Witch of Prague appeared in 1891, the same year as Khaled. He continued to publish novels, studies and drama, including Francesca da Rimini, staged in Paris in 1902 by Sarah Bernhardt. Crawford died at Sorrento in 1909.