Ella Hepworth Dixon was a British author during the late Victorian period.
Her best known work is the New Woman

New Woman

The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...

 novel The Story of a Modern Woman

The Story of a Modern Woman

The Story of a Modern Woman is a novel written by English author Ella Hepworth Dixon. The novel was first published in 1894 and is an example of the "New Woman" genre of late-Victorian England...

. This novel was published in 1894.

Life

Ella Hepworth Dixon was born in London in 1855. She was the seventh child in a family of eight born to William Hepworth Dixon and Marian MacMahon Dixon.
William was an editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

, and consequently, literature and the arts were valued in their house for the boys and girls. William's position also brought writers and thinkers into the house, including Geraldine Jewsbury

Geraldine Jewsbury

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury was an English novelist and woman of letters.-Life and family:Jewsbury was born in Measham, then in Derbyshire, now in Leicestershire. She was the daughter of Thomas Jewsbury , a cotton manufacturer and merchant, and his wife Maria, née Smith,...

, T.H. Huxley, Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...

, Lord Bulwer Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...

, Sir John Everett Millais, and E.M. Ward.

Ella received an outstanding education for a young woman at her time, studying at Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

 and the London School of Music, as well as painting in Paris.
In 1888, Ella accepted Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's offer to become the editor of Woman's World. She eventually also turned to playwriting. She died in 1932 at the age of 76.