Ethel Colburn Mayne
| Ethel Colburn Mayne | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Ethelind Frances Colburn Mayne 7 January 1865 Johnstown, County Kilkenny, Ireland |
| Died | 30 April 1941 (aged 76) Torquay, Devon, England |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Other names | Frances E. Huntley |
| Occupation | Novelist, biographer, literary critic, translator |
| Parent(s) |
|
Ethel Colburn Mayne (7 January 1865 - 30 April 1941) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, biographer, literary critic, journalist and translator.
She was born in Johnstown in Co. Kilkenny in 1865, to Charlotte Emily Henrietta Mayne (née Sweetman) and Charles Edward Bolton Mayne. The family was originally from Monaghan. Her father was a member (from 1858) of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Her mother's father Captain William Sweetman was in the 16th Lancers. The family moved to Kinsale in Co. Cork and then to Cork, where her father was appointed a resident magistrate to the city.
She attended private schools in Ireland.
Mayne's first published work came when in 1895, aged 30, she submitted a short story to the recently established literary periodical The Yellow Book. The editor Henry Harland accepted it, writing her an effusive letter, and the story, "A Pen-and-ink Effect", appeared in July 1895 in Volume 6 of the periodical, under the pen name Frances E. Huntley. In September 1895, her short story "Her Story and His" was published in Chapman's Magazine of Fiction, under the same pen name.
Later that year, in December, Harland invited Mayne to become sub-editor of The Yellow Book (to replace Ella D'Arcy, who had gone to France) and Mayne moved to London on 1 January 1896 to take up the post. Another short story, "Two Stories", appeared in the January 1896 edition of The Yellow Book, again under the Huntley pen name. She was much influenced by Harland, but tensions arose when D'Arcy returned in the spring and set about undermining her position at the periodical, and when Harland refused to intervene, Mayne gave up and returned to Cork.
She continued writing and in 1898 published her first collection of short-stories, The Clearer Vision, this time under her own name. The title derives from a favourite phrase of Harland's, "the clearer vision of the writer". She published her first novel, Jessie Vandeleur in 1902. That year her mother died, and she was left to look after her father and her invalid sister Violet.
In 1905 her father retired, and the family moved to London, residing in Holland Road, Kensington. She published her first translation, anonymously, in 1907: The Diary of a Lost One by the German writer Margarete Böhme, a purported true-life diary of a girl forced into prostitution and a best-selling sensation at the time.
...
Wikipedia