Ada Ellen Bayly (25 March 1857 – 8 February 1903), also known as Edna Lyall, was an English novelist, who "supported the women's suffrage movement from an early age."[1][2]
Ada Ellen Bayly | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 25 March 1857 |
| Died | 8 February 1903 (aged 45) |
| Nationality | English |
| Other names | Edna Lyall |
| Occupation | novelist |
| Signature | |
 | |
Biography
editBayly was born in Brighton, the youngest of four children of a barrister. Early in life she lost both her parents, so that she spent her youth with an uncle in Surrey and in a Brighton private school. Bayly never married. She seems to have spent her adult life living with her two married sisters and her brother, a clergyman in Bosbury, Herefordshire.
In 1879, she published her first novel, Won by Waiting, under the pseudonym "Edna Lyall" (apparently derived from transposing letters from Ada Ellen Bayly). The book was not a success. Success came with We Two, based on the life of Charles Bradlaugh, a social reformer and advocate of free thought. Her historical novel In the Golden Days was the last book read to John Ruskin on his deathbed;[3] while Hope the Hermit was a bestseller set in the Lake District and later an inspiration for Hugh Walpole's Rogue Herries.[4] To Right the Wrong (2nd ed. 1894) is a historical novel about John Hampden and the English Civil War.[1]
Bayly wrote in all eighteen novels, many of them offering interesting explorations of the writer's creative process.[5] Part of her success was due to her practice of using characters from one novel in a different capacity in her next.[6]
Selected works
edit- Won by Waiting, 1879
- Donovan, 1882
- We Two, sequel of the former, 1884
- In the Golden Days, 1885
- Autobiography of a Slander, 1887
- To Right the Wrong, 3 vols, 1894
- Doreen: The Story of a Singer, 1894[7]
- The Autobiography of a Truth, 1896
- Wayfaring Men: A Novel, 1896
- Hope the Hermit, 1898
- The Burgess Letters, 1902
See also
editCitations
edit- ^ a b XIX Century Fiction, Part II: L–Z, London: Jarndyce, 2020, Item 34.
- ^ G. Lindop, A Literary Guide to the Lake District (1993) p. 311.
- ^ Drabble, Margaret (ed.) (1995), The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th rev. ed.), Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
- ^ G. Lindop, A Literary Guide to the Lake District (1993) p. 311.
- ^ Darby Lewes, Auto-poetica (2006) p. 67
- ^ S. Mitchell, Victorian Britain (2012) p. 468
- ^ Lyall, Edna (14 January 2009). "Doreen. The Story of a Singer, by Edna Lyall". Retrieved 6 February 2023 – via Project Gutenberg Canada.
References
edit
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
Further reading
edit- G. A. Payne, Edna Lyell: An Appreciation (1903)
External links
edit- Works by Ada Ellen Bayly at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Ada Ellen Bayly at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by or about Edna Lyall at the Internet Archive
- Works by or about Ada Ellen Bayly at the Internet Archive
- Works by Ada Ellen Bayly at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Won by Waiting (1892) Appleton, New York (Google ebook)
- Golden Gale (all eighteen of her works of fiction)
- Jesse Maria Escreet (1904) The life of Edna Lyall (Ada Ellen Bayly), Longmans, Green, and Co., London (Google ebook)
