Who was Mary De Morgan and why should she be dragged out of the shadows cast by her illustrious parents, her male siblings and the members of the Arts and Crafts circle in which she moved? Why should the academic spotlight be shone onto her life and works?
De Morgan (1850–1907) was undoubtedly a woman of her time: she was unmarried and therefore one of the million or so “odd” women who had to earn their own living, which she did mainly by writing. She was one of the many who took part in the great effort to “improve” the lives of the poor in the East End of London; she was caught up in the spiritualist phenomena, not only because her mother was an ardent supporter and practitioner, but also because De Morgan herself was considered to be a “seer”; she, like many Victorians, suffered from the curse of tuberculosis but despite going to live in Egypt for health reasons, she then became the directress of a girls’ reformatory until her death.
Through the analysis of her fairy tales, her sole novel, her non-fictional articles and her unpublished short stories, De Morgan is revealed to be an early feminist and “New Woman,” an advocate of William Morris’s philosophies and a social reformer, but also a rather disappointed and disillusioned woman. Letters to and from her family and friends paint a colourful picture of family life during the second half of the nineteenth century, and extracts from well-known people’s biographies, reminiscences and diaries flesh out De Morgan’s character and help explain why George Bernard Shaw considered her to be a “devil incarnate.”
