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O'NEILL, Rose (Cecil)

Born 25 June 1874, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; died 6 April 1944, Springfield, Missouri

Also wrote under: Rose Cecil O'Neill, Mrs. H. L. Wilson

Daughter of William P. and Alice Smith O'Neill; married Gray Latham, 1896 (divorced 1901); Harry L. Wilson, 1902 (divorced 1907)

Rose O'Neill was educated in parochial schools in Omaha, Nebraska. Her professional career began at thirteen, when she won a children's drawing contest sponsored by the Omaha World-Herald, which then engaged her to do a weekly cartoon series. O'Neill later moved to New York City, where her work found a ready market. At nineteen, she was a nationally known illustrator and later was also a regular contributor of stories and poems to women's magazines. In 1896, she married Gray Latham, whom she divorced in 1901. The next year she married Wilson, the novelist and playwright; that marriage ended in 1907.

O'Neill is best remembered for the Kewpies, sentimentalized "little cupids" whose illustrated adventures in verse appeared first in the 1909 Christmas issue of the Ladies' Home Journal and later in other magazines and in several books. In 1913, O'Neill patented the design, and Kewpie dolls and other Kewpie-decorated articles earned a fortune in royalties.

The first of four novels, The Loves of Edwy (1904), shows O'Neill's characteristic charm, humor, and tenderness; it reveals much about her own childhood and youth in a large, needy family. The Lady in the White Veil (1909) is a farcical mystery story in which a stolen Titian portrait is repeatedly recovered and lost anew. In spite of prodigious energy and O'Neill's unremitting mirth, it soon becomes tedious. Garda (1929) presents a fantasy world both beautiful and bizarre. Garda and her twin brother, Narcissus, symbolize a single mystical being represented as body and soul, the one joyously sensual, the other sensitive and suffering. They are in conflict over and ultimately reconciled by a common passion. The Goblin Woman (1930) is unsuccessful in attempting to combine a theme of sin and redemption with a milieu of contemporary sophistication.

The Master-Mistress (1922) is a collection of poems, varying in quality from excellent to trivial, on many moods and aspects of natural and supernatural love. Like all O'Neill's works, it is illustrated by the author.

In spite of substantial critical appreciation, none of the works for adults had a second edition. Their conspicuous merits were overwhelmed by excesses of whimsy and sentimentality. O'Neill's Irish forebearers were given both credit and blame for qualities in her writing described as "Celtic." A modern reader will find much wit, originality, and beauty of language and atmosphere in her works.