Ethel Colburn Mayne

She was born in Johnstown in County Kilkenny in 1865, to Charlotte Emily Henrietta Mayne (née Sweetman) and Charles Edward Bolton Mayne. The family was originally from Monaghan.[1] Her father was a member (from 1858) of the Royal Irish Constabulary.[1] Her mother's father Captain William Sweetman was in the 16th Lancers.[2] The family moved to Kinsale in County Cork and then to Cork,[3] where her father was appointed a resident magistrate to the city.[1]

She attended private schools in Ireland.[2]

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.[3] The editor Henry Harland accepted it, writing her an effusive letter,[3] 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.[3][4] 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.[3]

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".[3] 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.[3]

In 1905 her father retired, and the family moved to London, residing in Holland Road, Kensington.[3] 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.

She published her second novel, The Fourth Ship, in 1908, and also published her first French translation, a work of the French historian Jules-Auguste Lair on Louise de La Vallière, mistress of Louis XIV. She would continue publishing translations of French and German works throughout her life.

In 1909 she published her first biographical work, Enchanters of Men, "studies of two dozen sirens from Diane de Poitiers to Adah Isaacs Menken".[2] In 1912, in what became a specialist subject for her, she published a two-volume biography of Byron, which was well-received, and became her best known work. She followed this in 1913 with a literary study of Robert Browning, Browning's Heroines.

Her fourth and last novel, One of Our Grandmothers, was published in 1916.

Mayne was an active all-round journalist, reviewing fiction for The Nation and The Daily News, and writing articles for the Daily Chronicle and The Yorkshire Post.[2] In the 1920s and 1930s she was on the English committee of the Prix Femina, a French literary prize with an all-female panel, and president 1924-25.[3]

She published her sixth and final collection of short stories, Inner Circle, in 1925.

In January 1927 her father died, which meant the loss of his pension, and left the family, which included Violet and a brother-in-law, dependent on her literary income.[3] Now in her sixties, she was granted a small civil list pension in March that year for "services to literature".[3] The family moved from Kensingston to Richmond[3] and then to near-by St. Margarets, in Twickenham, where she continued her literary work, and found recreation in "walking, reading and playing patience".[2]

In 1929 she published The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron, on Lady Noel Byron, Byron's wife, and continuing her speciality, published a translation of Charles du Bos's Byron et le besoin de la fatalité in 1932.

In 1939, aged 74, she published her final work, A Regency Chapter: Lady Bessborough and Her Friendships, a study of the Countess of Bessborough, the mother of Byron's mistress Lady Caroline Lamb. In May that year she was granted a pension by the Royal Literary Fund. She died on 30 April 1941 at the Trinity Nursing Home in Torquay, Devon.[3]

She was friends with the writers Hugh Walpole, Violet Hunt, and (especially) Mary Butts.[3]

According to Allan Nevins, her short stories showed "exquisite pains addressed to essentially inconsequential themes".[2] Robert Morss Lovett wrote "Miss Mayne's touch upon reality is delicate, reserved, withdrawing".[2] Stanley Kunitz describes her Encanters of Men biographical study as "vivacious and readable".[2]

• The Yellow Nineties Online - "A Pen-and-ink Effect" by Frances E. Huntley
• The Yellow Nineties Online - "Two Stories" by Frances E. Huntley
• Works by Ethel Colburn Mayne at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Ethel Colburn Mayne at Internet Archive