Ethel M. Kelley

Ethel May Kelley (June 21, 1878 – August 1, 1955) was an American writer of novels, stories, and poems, active in the early twentieth century.

Early life and education

Kelley was born in West Harwich, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, the daughter of Gersham Hall Kelley and Laura Etta Small Kelley. She began writing for a local newspaper when she was twelve years old, and sold poems to national publications while she was still in her teens.

Career

Kelley wrote novels, stories, and poetry. One of her novels, Turn About Eleanor, was adapted for the screen as The Deciding Kiss (1918). Her bestselling novel Wings (1925) was called a "pop-eyed, nutty book", mainly for its flapper characters and backwards timeline. However, the book was also compared with works by Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Modern young people were also the main characters of Turn About Eleanor (1917) and Beauty and Mary Blair (1921).

Kelley was fiction editor at Hampton's Magazine from 1906 to 1913, working with Theodore Dreiser. She commented on children's literature and recommended books for children. In 1927, she was one of the writers in a newspaper roundtable on the subject "Women and Wives—Are they Rebels Against Society?", along with Floyd Dell, Harvey Fergusson, Thyra Samter Winslow, and John Van Alstyne Weaver. She sometimes used the pen names "Barbara Kay" and "Lucia Whitney".

Publications

"My Heart Hath a Song" (1901, Century)

"Refuge" (1901, Century)

"The Promised Land" (1901, Lippincott's)

"The Artistic Temperament" (1905, poem)

When I Was Little (1915, poetry collection for children, illustrated by Maud Hunt Squire)