Clara Savile Clarke was born 13 January 1869 to Helen Weatherill Clarke (1841-1898) and Henry Savile Clarke (1841-1893). Not much is known about her early life, but during her childhood, her father was the first dramatist to adapt Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the stage in 1886 (“North Yorkshire History: Henry Savile Clarke” par. 40). Because of his connection with Henry Clarke, Carroll gifted a copy of his poetry collection, Rhyme? And Reason?, to his daughter that year, with the inscription: “Clara Savile Clarke, from the Author, Nov 5/86” (First Editions, 44).

As teenagers, Clarke and her sisters were known as society beauties. Whereas Maggie and Kitty, her two younger sisters, were known for their skirt dancing, Clara preferred a quiet life with her family. Maggie and Kitty continued skirt dancing well into the early 1890s; their names were associated with Letty Lind (1861-1923), who was known as an actress, singer, dancer, and acrobat. Though Clara, Maggie, and Kitty’s names all appear in British periodicals of the time, not much is known about their private lives prior to the 1890s.

Clara Clarke published primarily poetry. Her first piece of writing was published in the 1886 Christmas edition of The Court Circular, a literary journal edited by her father. Clarke’s poem, “A Letter from Town,” was published alongside work by Carroll and theatre critics Clement Scott (1841-1904) and Austin Brereton (1862-1922). The Ipswich Journal reviewed Clarke’s poetry as a “dainty bit of simple verse . . . which for so young a writer is full of promise.” At the time of publication, Clarke was only seventeen.

Following her debut in The Court Circular, Clarke continued to publish in literary magazines and journals. In 1889 she published a poem in the thirteenth volume of The Theatre, a Monthly Review, titled “A Persian Legend,” which allows us to catch a glimpse of the poet she was. In 1891, Cassell & Co. published Clarke’s The Poet’s Audience, and Delilah; these were two separate tales under a combined title. With the release of her first book, Clarke cemented her presence in the fin-de-siècle literary world.

The year 1893 proved to be full of literary success. At this time, Clarke began to produce duologues, short dramatic pieces performed by two actors rather than one. “A Cruel Alternative,” her first recorded duologue, was performed at the Prince of Wales’ Club by a Mr. Murray Carson (1865-1917) and Miss Eweretta Lawrence (active 1882-1896): “Miss Savile Clarke, the daughter of the well-known critic, is to produce a little play at the Prince of Wales’s Club next Friday evening. Miss Savile Clarke is already known as the author of some very interesting short stories, but this is, we believe, her first appearance as a dramatist. The heroine and hero of the playlet will be Miss Eweretta Lawrence and Mr. Murray Carson” (The Era).

Tragically, in the midst of her literary success, Clarke’s father died of tuberculosis and her younger sister, Maggie, also became ill with tuberculosis. The London Evening News announced Henry’s death on 9 October 1893: “Mr. Henry Savile Clarke, whose lamented death at the age of fifty-two took place at his residence, Cleveland Lodge, Westbourne Gardens, Bayswater, on Thursday last” (London Evening News). A few weeks following his death and internment, Clara published her second book, The World’s Pleasures, with Bliss, Sands, and Foster. Unlike The Poet’s Audience, and Delilah, The World’s Pleasure was a collection of short stories. In late November, The Sketch published a short review of The World’s Pleasures and noted the title of two of Clarke’s short stories as “The Pleasures of Marriage” and “The Pleasures of Bohemia.” In the Christmas issue of the English Illustrated Magazine, Clarke published a fairy tale titled “The Golden Ball” that featured coloured illustrations by Anglo-French artist Amédée Forestier (1854-1930). The Sketch called the English Illustrated Magazine’s Christmas issue “the most frivolous of the Christmas numbers.”

An article for the Blackburn Standard identifies Clarke as “one of the most promising of the younger writers of the day,” noting that she “contributes tales to half-a-dozen Christmas numbers this winter.” One of these periodicals was Sylvia’s Journal, edited by Yellow Book contributor Graham R. Tomson (1860-1911), aka Rosamond Marriott Watson. The Kentish Mercury notes that Clarke was also published in “the Christmas number of Woman,” but neglects to provide the periodical’s full title.

As Clarke continued to publish poetry and fiction, her connections to the fin-de-siècle little magazine community began to grow, particularly after she became acquainted with decadent artist Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), artistic editor of The Yellow Book in its first year (1894) and subsequently its rival, The Savoy (1896). Helen Savile Clarke, the matriarch of the family, became quite close with Beardsley after the deaths of her husband and her daughter Maggie. Beardsley wrote a letter to Helen that stated “it was so delightful of you to send me that art muslin. It suits me so well and will be so nice and cool in the hot weather” (Beardsley Letters, 93). In The Letters of Aubrey Beardsley, the recipient of this letter is identified as Clara Clarke, but the editors’ footnotes correctly attribute the letter to her mother, Helen Savile Clarke.

In 1894, Clarke published short stories in both the English Illustrated Magazine and Seven Stories by Modern Women. Clarke’s appearance in Seven Stories associates her with other popular women writers of the time, such as Marie Corelli (1855-1924). Indeed, the London Evening Standard published an advertisement for the Lady’s Pictorial that established Corelli’s association with Clarke, stating that the publication featured such “familiar and popular writers as Miss Marie Corelli . . . and Miss Clara Savile Clarke.” In 1895, the women writers that Clarke was published alongside of in Oswald Crawfurd’s Dialogues of the Day included Marion Hepworth Dixon, the sister to Ella Hepworth Dixon, Violet Hunt, Gertrude Kingston, and Leila Macdonald (wife of Hubert Crackanthorpe).

In early 1896, Beardsley wrote to Leonard Smithers (1861-1907), publisher of The Savoy, to say that he was “very pleased [Clara Savile Clarke’s] contribution [was] being put in[to]” the magazine’s next issue. In a later letter to Smithers, Beardsley offered to draw a picture for Clarke’s story, “A Mere Man,” which he did not end up illustrating (Beardsley, Letters 116). The Savoy had published its first quarterly number in January 1896, with the second coming out in April. “A Mere Man,” published in the second volume under the signature of “A New Writer,” is widely regarded to be Clarke’s best work of fiction. It is currently unknown why Clarke decided to publish her work in The Savoy anonymously.

The narrative of “A Mere Man” resists the social expectations placed on Victorian women, a theme that Clarke continued in her second short story for The Savoy, “Elsa.” Both short stories were published under her “A New Writer” signature and both characters, Elsa and Aimée, challenge Victorian feminine ideals. Elsa is portrayed as a “bad woman” (Cuneo and Hacker, Introduction to Savoy, vol. 6) and Aimée as “a woman who pursues her own desires, rejecting the societal expectations of a mother and wife” (Pettis and Prince, Introduction to Savoy, vol. 2). In the Sheffield Independent, Clarke’s work is described as “clever but uncomfortable.”

Following her appearance in volumes two and six of The Savoy, Clarke continued to place her work in Cassell’s Magazine, Chapman’s Magazine of Fiction, and The Sketch throughout 1896, with pieces like “The Coiffeur” and “A Modern Menage.” However, her health began to decline, which resulted in a decrease in her short fiction publications. Beardsley wrote a letter to Smithers in March 1897, letting him know that “the Clarkes have giving up their house in Alexandra Street (No. 26) and are now in Cadogan Square (No. 59)” (Beardsley Letters 264). In January 1898, Helen Savile Clarke suffered a fatal stroke and passed. Her death certificate shows that Clara was then residing with her mother in Chelsea.

In the months that followed, Clara Savile Clarke’s own health began to deteriorate due to multiple neuritis (Barrigan n.p.), which she had been diagnosed with prior to her mother’s death, and which ultimately led to her untimely death later that year. Despite her poor health, however, Clarke did manage to publish a new short story in February 1898. This story was titled “King Bluebeard” and was illustrated by an H. Cowham, presumably the artist Hilda Gertrude Cowham (1873-1964). In May of 1898, Clarke married an Alexander Roblou (1863-1938) just a few short days following her younger sister Kitty’s marriage to Cyril Martineau (1871-1918). Sadly, just a few short weeks after her marriage to Roblou, Clarke experienced cardiac degeneration, which resulted in her death. Though Clarke passed in June of 1898, The Chicago Ledger has a final short story in its archives attributed to Clarke titled “A Deadly Dream.” This short story appeared in the Ledger’s November 1898 issue, which advertises the short story as being about a woman who, “wedded to a man she did not love…deserted him for another, when her vision of joy turned suddenly to night.”

Despite her connections to the Aesthetic and Decadent movements of the 1890s and her familial connections to literature and literary genius, Clarke remains widely unknown and unremembered, a true tragedy considering the verve with which she wrote her stories.

© 2025 Dany Prince

Dany Prince is an English doctoral student at Howard University in Washington D.C. They are an editor of the Ink & Society literary anthology and co-author of the Critical Introduction to The Savoy, vol. 2, on Yellow Nineties 2.0. Their research interests lie primarily in Victorian literature and literary theory.

Selected Publications by Clara Savile Clarke

• “The Admiral’s Yarn.” The Sketch, no. 110, vol. 9, 6 March 1895.

• “The Coiffeur.” The Sketch, no. 196, vol. 26, 28 October 1896.

• “Choosing a Ball Dress.” Dialogues of the Day, edited by Oswald Crawfurd, Chapman and Hall, 1895.

• “The Count’s Madness.” The Sketch, 4 July 1894.

• “A Deadly Dream.” The Chicago Ledger, vol. 26, no. 47, 23 November 1898, pp. 1-2.

• “The Doctor’s Daughter.” Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1896.

• “Elsa.” The Savoy, Vol. 6, Oct. 1896, pp. 63-74. Savoy Digital Edition, edited by Christopher Keep et al, Yellow Nineties 2.0, Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Digital Humanities, https://1890s.ca/savoyv6-clarke-elsa/

• “The Golden Ball.” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. 11, no. 123, 27 November 1893, pp. 340-344.

• “A Human Sacrifice.” Dialogues of the Day, edited by Oswald Crawfurd, Chapman and Hall, 1895.

• “Her Son’s Wife.” English Illustrated Magazine, December 1894.

• “King Bluebeard.” The Sketch, no. 264, vol. 21, 16 February 1898.

• “A Letter from Town.” Court Circular, 1886.

• “A Mere Man.” The Savoy, vol. 2, April 1896, pp. 26-54. Yellow Nineties 2.0, https://1890s.ca/savoyv2-clarke-mere/

• “A Modern Menage.” Chapman’s Magazine of Fiction, Vol. 4, May 1896, pp. 30-36.

• “A Modern Mistake.” Lady’s Pictorial, November 1894.

• “A Persian Legend.” The Theatre: A Monthly Review and Magazine, vol. 13, 1 April 1889, pp. 193-195.

• The Poet’s Audience, and Delilah. Cassell and Co., 1891.

• “A Point of Honour,” Dialogues of the Day, edited by Oswald Crawfurd, Chapman and Hall, 1895.

• “Pour Passer Le Temps.” The Sketch, no. 43, vol. 4, 22 November 1893.

• “Story of Cressida Burke.” Court Circular, 1889.

• The World’s Pleasures. Bliss, Sands, and Foster, 1893.

• “The Wife of Dives.” The Sketch, no. 92, vol. 7, 31 October 1894.

Selected Publications About Clara Savile Clarke

• Barrigan, Alice. “Helen Savile Clarke and Her Daughters.” North Yorkshire History. 5 February 2013,
  http://northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.com/2013/02/helen-savile-clarke-and-her-daughters.html.

• Beardsley, Aubrey. The Letters of Aubrey Beardsley, edited by Henry Maas, J. L. Duncan, and W. G. Good, Plantin Press, 1970.

• Cuneo, Emma, and Sammy Hacker. “Critical Introduction to Volume 6 of The Savoy (October 1896).” Savoy Digital Edition, edited by Christopher Keep et al, 2018-2020. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2021, https://1890s.ca/savoyv6-critical-introduction/.

• First Editions of the Works of Esteemed Authors of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Maggs Bros Catalogue No. 367, nd.

• Nelson, James G. Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, and Dowson. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

• Pettis, Jeff, and Dany Prince. “Critical Introduction to Volume 2 of The Savoy (1896).” Savoy Digital Edition, Yellow Nineties 2.0, https://1890s.ca/savoyv2-critical-introduction/.

Reviews and Notices of Clarke’s Publications

• Blackburn Standard 30 December 1893.

• The Era 8 July 1893.

• Ipswich Journal 13 December 1886.

• Kentish Mercury 22 December 1893.

• The London Evening News 9 October 1893.

• The London Evening Standard November 1894.

• Sheffield Independent, May 1896.

• The Sketch 6 December 1893.