Scottish novelist and a leader of the Kailyard (Kailyard school) (kitchen garden) school (q.v.) of writers who depicted Scottish rural life in a sentimental fashion.

After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1879 and studying for the ministry at New Colly, Edinburgh, in 1886 he became minister of Penicuik, Midlothian. With the success of the novels The Stickit Minister (1893) and The Lilac Sunbonnet (1894), he abandoned the ministry for writing, following the vogue for novels in Scots dialect set by James M. Barrie. Crockett published more than 40 books, mainly novels.