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Boston's Catherine Crowley (1856-1920), Writer of Popular Children's Books and Historical Romance Novels



Mary Catherine Crowley was part of a generation of post-Famine Boston Irish and Irish-American women who rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th century.  She and numerous other young women writers were encouraged and first published in The Boston Pilot under editors John Boyle O’Reilly and Katharine Conway. 

Born in Boston on November 28, 1856, her father’s family were prominent in the Catholic history of Boston; her grandfather, Daniel Crowley, was one of the early Catholic settlers in East Boston, and her father defended the local Catholic Church against an attack by a Know Nothing mob in 1854.  On her mother’s side, she was part of the famous Cameron family of Scotland, wrote James B. Cullen in The Story of the Irish in Boston. She attended the Notre Dame Academy, Roxbury and then the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville. 

Early in her career, she used a pen name, Janet Grant, when submitting writing to The Boston Globe. 

Crowley first gained recognition as a writer of children’s stories, and published several volumes, including Merry Hearts and True, Happy Go Lucky and Everyday Girl. 

 In 1889,  Ave Maria Magazine wrote, “Miss Mary Catherine Crowley, of Boston, although one of the youngest of our Catholic authors, has already earned a high reputation as a poet and story-writer. It is a pleasure to announce that a collection of Crowley’s stories for young folks will soon be brought out by a New York publisher. Her contributions to the Ave Maria have been particularly admired. Her new book will include several of these (including) ‘Potato,’ and ‘The Blind Apple-Woman.’ They are among the brightest and best stories for boys and girls ever published by an American magazine.” 

The Boston Pilot wrote, “The success of Mary Catherine Crowley in that department of literature where so few succeed —juvenile literature—is an especial pleasure to her Boston friends. She will always be counted in with that little group of Catholic literary workers” encouraged by Boyle O'Reilly.

After moving with her family to Michigan, Crowley turned to adult fiction.  She wrote a trilogy of romance novels about the founding of Detroit, which gained her a wide following and literary success. The novels delved into the founding of Detroit and involved the struggle between French and English settlers as well as the Native Americans living there. 

The trilogy included The heroine of the Strait: A Romance of Detroit in the Time of Pontiac (1902); Love Thrives in War: a Romance of the Frontier in 1812 (1903); and In treaty with Honor : a Romance of Old Quebec (1906). 

The Pilot called her three novels “vivid and enchanting pictures of its progress and of the heroic personages whose lives are forever linked with its history”.

Crowley often returned to Boston on speaking tours and was warmly greeted by her friends and fans.  In December, 1903, she appeared at the John Boyle O’Reilly Reading Club and also the Adventure Club in Lawrence, where she lectured on the 'Evolution of a Novelist.'   The following February, 1904, Crowley gave an illustrated presentation of Madonna in Modern Art at St. Alphonsus Hall, Roxbury, and at Fitton High School in East Boston, where many people who knew her grandparents came out to meet her.

Read about other accomplished Irish women in Massachusetts history.

- Research + Text, Michael Quinlin 

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