Grace Rhys
{{Short description|Irish writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2020}}
{{Use Irish English|date=January 2020}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Grace Rhys
| image = Portrait of Grace Rhys.jpg
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Grace Little
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1865|07|12|df=yes}}
| birth_place = Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland
| death_date ={{death date and age|1929|03|15|1865|07|12|df=yes}}
| death_place = Washington, D.C., United States
| nationality = Irish
| other_names =
| occupation = Novelist
| spouse = {{Marriage|Ernest Percival Rhys|5 January 1891}}
| children = 3
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
}}
Grace Rhys ({{nee|Little}}; 1865–1929) was an Irish writer.
Biography
Grace Little was born in Boyle, County Roscommon on 12 July 1865.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YUCUc6e5ujIC&pg=PA2938-IA2&ci=167%2C219%2C765%2C377 |title=Irish Literature: Street Songs |volume=VIII |editor-last=McCarthy |editor-first=Justin |publisher=John D. Morris & Company |place=Philadelphia |page=2940 |date=1904 |access-date=2023-09-17 |via=Google Books}} 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.{{Cite ODNB |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/35733 |first1=Alec |last1=Waugh |first2=Katharine |last2=Chubbuck |title=Rhys, Ernest Percival}} The couple sometimes worked side by side in the British Museum. 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 in Harper's Magazine.
Her other work includes [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008667588 The Wooing of Sheila] (1901),{{cite journal|title=Review: The Wooing of Sheila by Grace Rhys|journal=The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art|date=9 November 1901|volume=92|page=595|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1XRHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA595}} 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 from a heart attack at a hotel in Washington D.C. on 15 March 1929 while accompanying her husband on an American lecture tour.{{cite book|author=John Kimberley Roberts|title=Ernest Rhys|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NOANAAAAIAAJ|year=1983|publisher=University of Wales Press|page=9|isbn=9780708308462 }}{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/evening-star-death-claims-wife-of-britis/131949923/ |title=Death Claims Wife of British Lecturer |newspaper=The Evening Star |page=30 |date=1929-03-15 |access-date=2023-09-17 |via=Newspapers.com}}
References
{{reflist}}
=Sources=
- Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900–14: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty, ed. Kemp, Mitchell, Trotter (OUP, 1997)
External links
- {{wikisource author-inline}}
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Grace Rhys}}
- {{Librivox author |id=13964}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rhys, Grace}}
Category:People from Boyle, County Roscommon