Ellen Hughes

Ellen Hughes (1867–1927), from Llanengan in northern Wales, was a Welsh-language writer, temperance reformer and suffragist.

Strongly influenced by Sarah Jane Rees, she was thrilled at having a poem published in the Welsh-language women's periodical Y Frythones when she was only 18. The year 1907 saw the publication of the essay Angylion yr Aelwyd (Angels in the Home) which she had written in 1899. Now a member of the Unded Dirwestol Merched y De (UDMD), the South Wales Women's Temperence Union, her article criticized men's arguments for keeping women out of parliament. The same year she also published Murmur y Gragen. Sef detholion o gyfansoddiadau barddonol a rhyddiaethol (Murmur of the Shell: Selection of Poetry and Prose).

In her A View Across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales (1899), Jane Aaron describes Hughes as "arguably the Welsh-language author of the period who comes closest to being a feminist in the modern sense". Covering her contributions to the journal Y Gymraes (The Welsh Woman) in 1900, she quotes a passage in which Hughes mocks William Gladstone, the prime minister of the day: "The idea that an elder of the wisdom of Mr Gladstone should doubt the capacity of the majority of women to vote in an election strikes us as wonderfully astonishing!".