Grace Rhys (''née'' Little, 1865–1929) was an Irish writer brought up in

Boyle, County Roscommon Boyle (; ) is a town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located at the foot of the Curlew Mountains near Lough Key in the north of the county. Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery, the Drumanone Dolmen and the lakes of Lough Arrow and Lough Gar ...

Biography

Joseph Bennet Little, her landowner father, lost his money through gambling and, after receiving a good education from governesses, she and her sisters had to move to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

as adults to earn a living. She was both wife and literary companion to Ernest Percival Rhys whom she met at a garden party given by

Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

. They married in 1891 and sometimes worked side by side in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. Her first novel, ''Mary Dominic'', was published in 1898. Several of her stories have an Irish setting, including ''The Charming of Estercel'' (1904) set in Elizabethan Ireland, which was illustrated by

Howard Pyle Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy. In 1894, he began ...

in Harper's Magazine. Her other work include
''The Wooing of Sheila''
(1901), ''The Bride'' (1909), and ''Five Beads on a String'' (1907), a book of essays. She also wrote poetry and books for children, and had a son and two daughters of her own. The Rhyses were known for entertaining writers and critics at their London home on Sunday afternoons. Grace died at a hotel in

Washington DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

while accompanying her husband on an American lecture tour.

References

Sources

* ''Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900–14: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty'', ed. Kemp, Mitchell, Trotter (OUP, 1997) * Katharine Chubbuck, ''Ernest Percival Rhys'' in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (2004)

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rhys, Grace 1865 births 1929 deaths Irish novelists People from County Roscommon Irish women novelists