MacMahon, Ella (1864–1956), novelist, was born Eleanor Harriet on 23 July 1864 in Dublin, elder of two children of the Rev. John Henry MacMahon (1829–1900), curate of St Werburgh's, Dublin (1860–71), and later chaplain of Mountjoy prison (1887–1900), and Frances MacMahon (née Snagge; d. 1898). Her father was also secretary to the board of religious education of the Church of Ireland, editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, and author of four books, including a translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics (1857) and Church and state in England, its origin and use (1872). Ella, who was educated at home, was also literary. From the 1890s she began contributing to periodicals such as the New Ireland Review, for which she wrote on local history. Her first novel, A new note, appeared in 1894 and over the next thirty-five years she was prolific, publishing over twenty novels as well as making numerous contributions to magazines, and several to BBC radio programmes. She was unmarried and writing was her main source of income, but during the first world war she worked as a civil servant in various government departments including War, Trade, and the newly created Intelligence department. Afterwards she lived in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, and converted at some stage to catholicism.
Her novels were romances: typical of them is An honorable estate (1898), which features an English heiress marrying an impoverished Irish clergyman in a fit of pique, only to fall in love with him. They are undemanding but entertaining and occasionally ironic, with clever social commentary. Irish Book Lover commended The job (1914) for its insightful and sympathetic characterisation. It is an account of a baronet's struggle to improve his Irish estate despite the fecklessness of the inhabitants. Ireland was a frequent setting for her stories; her view of it verges on the sentimental, and she often features eccentric but ultimately good-hearted country people. However, her last book, The wind of change (1927), is a more profound, interesting study. Set during the war of independence and the truce, it looks at the complexities within Irish society and the differences in attitude between the Anglo- and native Irish. Rich in characters, it features a naive English girl in love with Ireland, a papist-hating domestic servant, and an ascendancy grande dame who finds England monotonous but is adamant that her children will be educated there and will not acquire a brogue. Unlike MacMahon's other books it is not a romance and ends in tragedy and then acceptance for the coming change of regime. It reads like a lesser novel by Elizabeth Bowen (qv) and resembles in theme and argument – though not in quality – The last September (1929), which it predates. Unfortunately MacMahon was not inspired to go further in this line; she wrote no more and retired on a government civil pension. By the time of her death on 19 April 1956 she had fallen into complete obscurity, and surprisingly, given the quantity and relative merit of her work, she has no entry to date in any of the numerous anthologies of Irish or women writers.