Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Poet, translator, and spiritualist. Alternative signature: Mr. Eric Baker. Born c. 1825. Father was Rev. George Brickdale Crossman. Married to Eric Thomas Baker. Friend and correspondent of Robert Browning. Member of the Anglo-Florentine community in Italy, and Daniel Dunglas Hume conducted séances at her Bellosguardo villa. Reputed to have given Browning a manuscript account of the Roman murder trial that led to his Ring and the Book.Author of Fraud, Fancy, Fact: Which Is It? An Enquiry into the Mystery of Spiritualism (1862). Biographical information: Stefan Hawlin and Tim Burnett, eds., The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. xii; Leslie Stpehens, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1892), vol. 27, p. 225; Brownings’ Correspondence: An Online Edition (25 January 2025). (NM, AC)