Grace Rhys
Born
Grace Little

(1865-07-12)12 July 1865
Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland
Died15 March 1929(1929-03-15) (aged 63)
Washington, D.C., United States
NationalityIrish
OccupationNovelist
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1891)​
Children3

Grace Rhys (née Little; 1865–1929) was an Irish writer.

Biography

Grace Little was born in Boyle, County Roscommon on 12 July 1865.[1] 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 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. They married on 5 January 1891, and had three children.[2] The couple sometimes worked side by side in the British Museum. Her first novel, Mary Dominic, was published in 1898.[1] Several of her stories have an Irish setting, including The Charming of Estercel (1904) set in Elizabethan Ireland, which was illustrated by Howard Pyle in Harper's Magazine.

Her other work includes The Wooing of Sheila (1901),[3] 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.[2]

The Rhyses were known for entertaining writers and critics at their London home on Sunday afternoons. Grace died from a heart attack at a hotel in Washington D.C. on 15 March 1929 while accompanying her husband on an American lecture tour.[4][5]

References

  1. 1 2 McCarthy, Justin, ed. (1904). Irish Literature: Street Songs. Vol. VIII. Philadelphia: John D. Morris & Company. p. 2940. Retrieved 17 September 2023 – via Google Books.
  2. 1 2 Waugh, Alec; Chubbuck, Katharine. "Rhys, Ernest Percival". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35733. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ↑ "Review: The Wooing of Sheila by Grace Rhys". The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. 92: 595. 9 November 1901.
  4. ↑ John Kimberley Roberts (1983). Ernest Rhys. University of Wales Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780708308462.
  5. ↑ "Death Claims Wife of British Lecturer". The Evening Star. 15 March 1929. p. 30. Retrieved 17 September 2023 – via Newspapers.com.

Sources

  • Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900–14: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty, ed. Kemp, Mitchell, Trotter (OUP, 1997)
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