Sarah Grand Author

Sarah Grand (1854-1943) was an Irish feminist and novelist. Born Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke in Donaghadee, County Down, Grand was raised in England by her mother following her father’s death in 1862. She was expelled from the Royal Naval School in 1868 for organizing in support of feminist reformer Josephine Butler’s advocacy for the rights of sex workers. She married David Chambers McFall, a widowed surgeon 23 years her senior. Together, they raised a son alongside two boys from McFall’s previous marriage, travelling to the Far East and eventually settling in Lancashire. Constrained in her home life, she began writing novels and eventually left her husband in 1890 to move to London. There, she renamed herself Sarah Grand and published The Heavenly Twins (1893), a novel exploring the feminist ideal of the New Woman. Although she faced criticism for her radical views on marriage and the legal rights of women, Grand earned praise from such writers as George Bernard Shaw and George Gissing for her literary work.