TERRY, ELLEN ALICIA (1848-1928), English actress, was born at Coventry on Feb. 27, 1848. Her parents were well known provincial actors and close friends of the Keans. Her sisters Kate, Marion and Florence, and her brother Fred, all joined the theatrical profession. Her own first appearance on the stage was made on April 28, 1856, under the Keans' management, as the boy Mamilius in The Winter's Tale, at the Princess's theatre, London. Two years later she played Prince Arthur in King John and won high praise. From 186o to 1863 and again from 1867 to 1868 she acted with various stock companies. On Dec. 26, 1867 she played for the first time with Henry Irving, being cast as Katharine to his Petruchio in Garrick's version of The Taming of the Shrew at the Queen's theatre. When quite a girl she married G. F. Watts the painter, but the marriage was soon dissolved. Between 1868 and 1874, having married E. A. Wardell, an actor whose professional name was Charles Kelly, she was again absent from the stage, but reappeared at the Queen's theatre under Charles Reade's management. On April 17, 1875, she played Portia in a revival of The Merchant of Venice under the Bancrofts' management at the old Prince of Wales's theatre. A succession of smaller triumphs at the Court theatre culminated in her beautiful impersonation of Olivia in W. G. Wills's dramatic version of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, in 1878, the result of which was her engagement by Henry Irving as his leading lady for the Lyceum and the beginning of a long artistic partnership, in the success of which Ellen Terry's enchanting personality and fine aesthetic sense played a large part. Her Shakespearean im personations at the Lyceum were Ophelia in 1878, Portia in 1879, Desdemona in 1881, Juliet and Beatrice in 1882, Viola in 1884, Lady Macbeth in 1888, Katherine, in Henry VIII., and Cordelia in 1892, Imogen in 1896, and Volumnia, in Coriolanus, in 1901.
Other notable performances were those of the Queen in Wills's Charles I. in 1879, Camma in Tennyson's The Cup in 1881, Margaret in Wills's Faust in 1885, and the title-part in Charles Reade's one-act play Nance Old field (1893), Rosamund in Tenny son's Becket (1893), Madame Sans-Gene in Sardou's play (1897), and Clarisse in Robespierre (1899). With the Lyceum company she several times visited the United States. In 1902, while still acting with Sir Henry Irving, she appeared with Mrs. Kendal in Beerbohm Tree's revival of The Merry Wives of Wind sor, at His Majesty's theatre, and she continued, after Sir Henry Irving's death, to act at different theatres, notably at the Court theatre (1905) in some of Bernard Shaw's plays. In 1906 her stage-jubilee was celebrated in London with much enthusiasm, a popular subscription in England and America resulting in some L8,000 being raised. In 1907 Miss Terry married James Carew, an American actor.
In 1922 she was granted the honorary degree of LL.D (St. Andrews) ; and in 1925 she received the Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. Dame Ellen Terry's Both birthday was celebrated in February 1928, when an interesting reminiscent correspondence appeared in the Times. On the following July 21 she died, after a short illness, at Small Hythe, near Tenterden, Kent. Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson said of her: "Every thing she did was invested with great charm. I do not suppose there ever was such an Ophelia. Nor do I think there ever will be again. In the theatre she was adored. In the public estima tion she became a fetish. Take her for all in all she is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of the stage." In 1908 she published her only book, The Story of My Life.
See Charles Hiatt, Ellen Terry and her Impersonations (1898) ; Clement Scott, Ellen.Terry (1900) .