author
Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne) Clayton
1834–1900
An Irish-born writer and artist, she brought history and art to life for young readers and later became best known for a landmark book on women painters. Her career also reflected a wider fight for women’s place in the art world.
3 Audiobooks
The World Turned Upside Down
by Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne) Clayton
Female Warriors, Vol. 2 (of 2) Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era.
by Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne) Clayton
Female Warriors, Vol. 1 (of 2) Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era.
by Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne) Clayton
About the author
Born in Dublin in 1834 and raised from childhood in London, she came from a long family line of engravers. Writing under the name Ellen C. Clayton, she built a varied career as an author, illustrator, and journalist.
She wrote fiction as well as lively historical and biographical books for younger readers, and her best-known work is English Female Artists (1876), a two-volume study of women painters. Reliable sources also note that in 1859 she joined the push for women to be fully admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, which adds an important public dimension to her literary and artistic life.
She married James Henry Needham in 1879 but continued to be associated with her earlier name in print. She died in London in 1900, remembered as a versatile Victorian writer whose work connected art, biography, and popular reading.