Ella D'Arcy
Ella D'Arcy was an English writer born in London around 1857, known for her contribution to the New Woman movement in the 1890s. Although her body of work is limited, her short stories have been frequently anthologized due to their significance. D'Arcy began her artistic journey with ambitions of becoming a painter but turned to writing after her eyesight deteriorated. Her literary career gained traction with her notable story "The Elegie," published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1891, and she later became involved with the avant-garde publication, the Yellow Book. Despite her initial success, D'Arcy's output diminished significantly after the magazine ceased publication in 1898, possibly due to various personal and financial challenges.
Throughout her works, D'Arcy explored themes such as realism and the complexities of marriage, often presenting a critical view of societal norms regarding gender roles. She never married, though she was rumored to have had several intimate relationships. After leaving England for Paris, she continued to write but produced fewer works as time went on. D'Arcy's literary legacy is characterized by her psychological insight and her challenge to traditional stereotypes, reflecting the tensions of her time regarding women's roles and identity. She passed away in London in 1937.
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Ella D'Arcy
Writer
- Born: c. 1857
- Birthplace: Probably London, England
- Died: September 5, 1937
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Ella D’Arcy’s collected work is limited, yet her short stories continue to be anthologized, mainly because of her significance in the New Woman movement of the 1890’s. She was reviewed at the time as an up-and-coming writer of some significance, but for one reason or another, her production fell rapidly after her association with the Yellow Book ceased when the periodical closed down. Whether this was due to innate laziness, as some friends averred, or to over-sensitivity to criticism, or to lack of a “Room of One’s Own” and straightened financial circumstances, is not clear. Nor is it clear what her attitude was toward the New Woman movement itself: many of her depictions of women protagonists are far from flattering, and their treatment often seems unsympathetic.
Little is know of D’Arcy’s early years. She was born in London, perhaps in 1857, to Anthony and Sophia Ann Byrne D’Arcy. Her father was Irish, and was engaged in the corn and malt business. The family seemed to have spent time in Hythe on the English south coast, and also in the Channel Islands, off the French coast, which feature prominently in her later stories. She wanted to train as a painter, studying in Germany and France, then at the Slade School of Art in London from 1880 to 1881. Unfortunately, deteriorating eyesight prevented her from pursuing her chosen career.
Her first literary efforts appear to have been book reviews and several unremarkable short stories, the first of which may have been submitted to Charles Dickens for his magazine All the Year Round. Her story “The Expiation of David Scott” appeared in the December, 1890, issue of Temple Bar. She may have written others under the pseudonym of Gilbert H. Page for The Argosy. Her first significant story was “The Elegie,” which the well-known Blackwood’s Magazine published in November of 1891. The story centers around a young composer, his thwarted love for an aristocratic young lady, and the composition of a great work when he finds she has died loyal to him. A fellow short-story writer, George Egerton, praised the story.
Encouraged by this, she submitted a novella to Blackwood’s Magazine entitled The Bishop’s Dilemma, as well as a short story, “Irremediable.” However, both were rejected on the grounds of their realism and attitude toward marriage. The short story, however, came to the attention of Henry Harland, the editor of a new journal, the Yellow Book, an avant-garde publication which came later to represent the new literature of the 1890’s: New Woman, French realist, and decadent literatures. Her story appeared in its first volume in April of 1894, alongside stories by Egerton, Hubert Crackanthorpe, and others. Harland paid her to become his sub-editor for a while, until a difference of opinion occurred. Even so, she continued to have her short stories published there until the magazine’s demise in 1898. In 1895, she had published her first collection of these stories under the title Monochromes, in the Keynote series produced by the new editor of the Yellow Book, John Lane. In 1898 her novella finally received publication from him also. In the same year, a second collection of stories, Modern Instances, was published.
D’Arcy never married, though it is reputed she became intimately involved with several men, including the fantasy writer, M. P. Shiel; and she was certainly attracted to Lane. When Lane married, D’Arcy left England and settled in Paris, together with the younger writer Charlotte Mew. D’Arcy, however, was not interested in a lesbian relationship and Mew parted. D’Arcy wrote a few more stories while in Paris; those surviving are in the English Review in the years 1909-1910. She had wanted to write a biography of Percy Shelley, the Romantic poet, and the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, but in the end she translated the Andre Maurois’s Ariel: The Life of Shelley from the French in 1924. She died in London in 1937.
D’Arcy’s stories are marked by realism, psychological accuracy, a critical attitude to the institutions of marriage, and a deconstruction of traditional stereotypes of the good husband and the good wife. There are some melodramatic twists still remaining from the previous century, but these are offset by charming local coloring not dissimilar to work of American writer Sarah Orne Jewett.