Background
Francis Marion Crawford was born August 2, 1854 Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. He was the son of Thomas Crawford, an sculptor, and Louisa Cutler Ward. Crawford was a nephew of Julia Ward Howe, a poet, and had a sister.
Concord, New Hampshire, United States
Francis Crawford studied at St Paul's school.
Francis Marion Crawford was born August 2, 1854 Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. He was the son of Thomas Crawford, an sculptor, and Louisa Cutler Ward. Crawford was a nephew of Julia Ward Howe, a poet, and had a sister.
Francis Crawford studied at St Paul's school in Concord. Circa 1870 to 1879, he attended universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Heidelberg, and Rome. He terminated his studies in the Roman University, where he attended the lectures in Sanskrit and comparative philology given by the learned Professor Lignana. At the same time he was already occupied with English literature.
With the publication in 1882 of "Mr. Isaacs", his first and in some respects most characteristic novel, he suddenly leaped into fame. In 1883 he settled in Italy permanently. He lived at the Hotel Cocumella in Sant’Agnello. He then bought a farmhouse nearby, from which he developed the Villa Crawford, an impressive clifftop residence easily identifiable from the sea. While it was running through the press Crawford began a more carefully composed novel, "Dr. Claudius" (1883), which more than repeated the success of "Mr. Isaacs". His third novel, "A Roman Singer", ran serially through the pages of the "Atlantic Monthly" and was published in 1884. It was this third novel which opened out to Mr. Crawford his true field, the description of Italian life and character with its many cosmopolitan, and especially its American and English, affiliations. He was the author of some forty novels and one play, "Francesca da Rimini", and his publications commanded a larger sale than those of any contemporary writer of fiction in England or in the United States.
Besides those mentioned his principal works of fiction are the following: "Zoroaster" (1885); "A Tale of a Lonely Parish" (1886), "Saracinesca" (1887), "Marzio's Crucifix" (1887), "Paul Patoff" (1887), "Greifenstein" (1889), "Sant' Ilario" (1889), "A Cigarette Maker's Romance" (1890), "The Witch of Prague" (1891), "Don Orsino" (1892), "Pietro Ghisleri" (1893), "The Ralstons" (1895), "Corleone" (1897), "Via Crucis" (1899), "In the Palace of the King" (1900), "Marietta, A Maid of Venice" (1901), "The Heart of Rome" (1903), "Whosoever Shall Offend" (1904), "Soprano, A Portrait" (1905), "Fair Margaret" (1905), etc. In 1904 he published an essay entitled "The Novel: What it is", in which he gives his views upon the art of which he was a master. Crawford died at the Villa Crawford in Sant'Agnello after suffering a heart attack on April 9, 1909.
In early manhood, Francis Marion Crawford became a convert to the Catholic faith.
Quotations:
"No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship."
"To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself."
In 1884 Francis Crawford married Elizabeth Berdan. She was the daughter of the American Civil War Union General Hiram Berdan. They had two sons and two daughters.