Grace Rhys

Life
1865-1929 [née Little], b. Knockadoo, Boyle, Co. Roscommon, m. Ernest [Percival] Rhys (1859-1946), 1891; later ed. Banbury Cross children;’s series; issued Mary Dominic (1898); The Wooing of Sheila (1908); The Prince of Lisnover (1904); The Charming of Estercel (1913), wrote love stories combined with myth, hist., landlordism and rom. variations on same; ed., A Celtic Anthology (London: Harrap 1927). IF JMC SUTH OCIL

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Works
  • Cradle Songs and Nursery Rhymes, ed. with intro. (London: W Scott 1894).
  • ed., The Banbury Cross Series, 12 vols. (London: JM Dent 1894-95).
  • Mary Dominic (London: Dent 1898).
  • The Wooing of Sheila (London: Methuen 1901; NY: Holt 1908).
  • The Diverted Village: A Holiday Book (London: Methuen 1903).
  • Five Beads on a String (Priory Press Booklets 1903).
  • The Prince of Lisnover (London: methuen 1904).
  • The Children’s England (London: Cassell 1908).
  • The Bride (London: Methuen 1909).
  • Poems, foreword Isabella Richard [sister of Elizabeth Mary Little] (Dublin: Maunsel 1909).
  • Mother Goose’s Book of Nursery Rhymes and Songs, ed with Ernest Rhys (Everyman’s Library {Dent] 1909).
  • The Charming of Estercel (London: Dent 1913).
  • The Quest of the Ideal (Fellowship Bks 1913).
  • English Fairy Tales, collab. with Ernest Rhys (1913).
  • In Wheelabout and Cockalone (London: GC Harrap 1918).
  • About Many Things, Essays (London: Methuen 1920).
  • The Children’s Garland of Verse, ed. (London/Toronto: Dent 1921).
  • Eleanor in the Loft (London: J. Cape 1923).
  • A Little Philosophy of Love (London: Chapman & Dodd 1923).
  • trans. Jacob, by J Rainis [pseud. of Janis Krisjunis Plieaksans] (1924), another ed. 1965; ed., A Celtic Anthology (London: Harrap 1927).
  • A Book of Grace, Essays and Poems (Lon/Toronto: Dent; NY: Dutton 1930).
  • The Magic Wood Beyond the World (London: G. Harrap 1931).

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References
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); gives an extract from The Wooing of Sheila.

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin 1919), lists Mary Dominic (1898); The Wooing of Sheila (1908); The Prince of Lisnover (1904); The Charming of Estercel (1913)

Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction, Pt. 2 (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists Eleanor in the Loft (1923), unpleasant parents almost blight a daughters happiness at Doon House, but she discovers freedom, and and American knight errant, c.1919.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988), calls Rhys an author of lists delicate novels in Irish settings, such as Mary Dominic (1898), the story of a 17 year old humble Irish girl seduced by a rich lover and cast out by her parents; The Wooing of Sheila (1901), a rural love story set in Ireland.

Belfast Public Library holds The Wooing of Sheila (1901).

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