B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker

Born in Ireland, Bithia Mary Croker wrote under the name B. M. Croker and became widely known for fiction set in British India. Reliable biographical sources describe her as the daughter of the Rev. William Sheppard of County Roscommon; she was educated in Cheshire and in Tours, France, and was known in her youth as a skilled horsewoman.

After marrying John Stokes Croker, an army officer, she spent years in India and Burma. Those experiences shaped much of her writing, which often draws on colonial society, travel, and everyday life overseas. She also wrote ghost stories, and that mix of realism and the uncanny helped give her work a lasting appeal.

Croker was a notably prolific author, publishing many novels and stories over a long career. She died in 1920, but readers still return to her for lively storytelling, atmospheric settings, and a distinctive window into the world she knew.