Ella D'Arcy – författare

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

The Century races to a close but the reality of a woman’s place within it is still accepted as downtrodden and disposable. Society is slow to recognise and even slower to act. Our female authors begin to shine a light on where the future lies through these magnificent literary gems.

Ella D''Arcy was born on 23rd August 1857 in London, one of nine children.

Her education spanned London, Germany, France and the Channel Islands. A student of fine art, her poor eyesight meant a switch to literature was needed and with this she had hopes to be an author.

She worked as a contributor and unofficial editor, alongside Henry Harland, to The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley’s sensational quarterly magazine that combined art, stories, poetry, essays and much else besides. D''Arcy wrote several stories for the magazine and her stories have an undeniable psychological and realist style through her engagement with various themes from marriage, the family, imitation through to deception.

Recognition of her talents grew after the publication of ‘Irremediable’, in the Yellow Book, where it received much praise from critics.

She also wrote and published in the Argosy, Blackwood''s Magazine, and Temple Bar.

However, D’Arcy’s canon was small and, apart from her magazine stories, her book publishing was limited to ‘Monochromes’ (1895), ‘Modern Instances’ and ‘The Bishop’s Dilemma’ (1898). She also translated André Maurois''s biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley entitled ‘Ariel’ (1924).

Her diligence with work aside she was notorious for her inability to maintain relationships with friends. When she did appear to them it was often unannounced. This earned her the sobriquet ''Goblin Ella.''

D''Arcy spent much of her life living alone, though she had a constant urge to travel, but usually she resided on the edge of poverty. Her writing was often motivated by this need.

Much of her later life was spent in Paris before returning to London in 1937, where she died, in hospital, on 5th September.

When you are winning gambling seems very easy. You place a bet and receive your winnings. The thrill is a joyous electric shock of joy and applause. And winnings.

If you lose, well, at first you know your luck will turn. It must, you’re a winner. But if your luck fails, and keeps failing, misery endures and then envelops your life. Everything is centered on that next roll of the dice, the turn of the card …. Nothing else matters. You are addicted. These two sides of the coin are examined here by some enthralling literary talents such as Alexander Pushkin, James Joyce, Ella D’Arcy, Bret Harte, Anthony Hope and Saki.

Ella D''Arcy was born on 23rd August 1857 in London, one of nine children.

Her education spanned London, Germany, France and the Channel Islands. A student of fine art, her poor eyesight meant a switch to literature was needed and with this she had hopes to be an author.

She worked as a contributor and unofficial editor, alongside Henry Harland, to The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley’s sensational quarterly magazine that combined art, stories, poetry, essays and much else besides. D''Arcy wrote several stories for the magazine and her stories have an undeniable psychological and realist style through her engagement with various themes from marriage, the family, imitation through to deception.

Recognition of her talents grew after the publication of ‘Irremediable’, in the Yellow Book, where it received much praise from critics.

She also wrote and published in the Argosy, Blackwood''s Magazine, and Temple Bar.

However, D’Arcy’s canon was small and, apart from her magazine stories, her book publishing was limited to ‘Monochromes’ (1895), ‘Modern Instances’ and ‘The Bishop’s Dilemma’ (1898). She also translated André Maurois''s biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley entitled ‘Ariel’ (1924).

Her diligence with work aside she was notorious for her inability to maintain relationships with friends. When she did appear to them it was often unannounced. This earned her the sobriquet ''Goblin Ella.''

D''Arcy spent much of her life living alone, though she had a constant urge to travel, but usually she resided on the edge of poverty. Her writing was often motivated by this need.

Much of her later life was spent in Paris before returning to London in 1937, where she died, in hospital, on 5th September 1937.

Ella D''Arcy was born on 23rd August 1857 in London, one of nine children.

Her education spanned London, Germany, France and the Channel Islands. A student of fine art, her poor eyesight meant a switch to literature was needed and with this she had hopes to be an author.

She worked as a contributor and unofficial editor, alongside Henry Harland, to The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley’s sensational quarterly magazine that combined art, stories, poetry, essays and much else besides. D''Arcy wrote several stories for the magazine and her stories have an undeniable psychological and realist style through her engagement with various themes from marriage, the family, imitation through to deception.

Recognition of her talents grew after the publication of ‘Irremediable’, in the Yellow Book, where it received much praise from critics.

She also wrote and published in the Argosy, Blackwood''s Magazine, and Temple Bar.

However, D’Arcy’s canon was small and, apart from her magazine stories, her book publishing was limited to ‘Monochromes’ (1895), ‘Modern Instances’ and ‘The Bishop’s Dilemma’ (1898). She also translated André Maurois''s biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley entitled ‘Ariel’ (1924).

Her diligence with work aside she was notorious for her inability to maintain relationships with friends. When she did appear to them it was often unannounced. This earned her the sobriquet ''Goblin Ella.''

D''Arcy spent much of her life living alone, though she had a constant urge to travel, but usually she resided on the edge of poverty. Her writing was often motivated by this need.

Much of her later life was spent in Paris before returning to London in 1937, where she died, in hospital, on 5th September 1937.

These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language.

Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English.

Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties.

Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write. A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame. That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’. Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands. Here we include George Eliot and other examples.

We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day. Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain.

Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes. Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept?

Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page. An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form. Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy.

Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.

At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

Within these volumes are 151 authors and 161 miniature masterpieces of a few pages that contain story arcs, narratives, characters and happenings that pull you one way and push you another. Literature for the ears, the heart, the very soul. As the world changed and reshaped itself our species continued to generate words, phrases and stories in testament of the human condition.

This collection has a broad sweep and an inclusive nature and whilst you will find gems by D H Lawrence, G K Chesterton, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker and many, many others you’ll also find oddballs such as Lewis Carroll and W S Gilbert. Take time to discover the black humour of Violet Hunt, the short story craft of Edith Nesbit and Amy Levy, and ask why you haven’t read enough of Ella D’Arcy, Mary Butts and Dorothy Edwards.

Track Listing of Volume 5: A Novel in a Nutshell by George Moore; The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde; The Hired Baby, A Romance of the London Streets by Marie Correlli (Mary Mackay); The Runaway by Marion Hepworth Dixon; Long Odds by H Rider Haggard; Shut Out by F Anstey (Thomas Anstey Guthrie);

St George of Rochester by Henry Wodd Nevinson; Amour Dour by Violet Paget (writing as Vernon Lee);

My Flirtations. A Chapter by Ella Hepworth Dixon writing as Margaret Wynham; Irremediable by Ella D’Arcy; A Capitalist by George Gissing