Ada Bayly

Background

Bayly was born in Brighton, the youngest of four children of a barrister.

Career

Edna Lyall, was an English novelist, and an early feminist. 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.

While Hope the Hermit was a best-seller set in the Lake District which was later an inspiration for Hugh Walpole"s Rogue Herries. Bayly wrote in all eighteen novels, many of them offering interesting explorations of the writer"s creative process.

Participant of her success was due to her practice of using characters from one novel in a different capacity in her next.

Achievements

• In 1879, she published her first novel, Won by Waiting, under the pen name of "Edna Lyall" (apparently derived from transposing letters from Ada Ellen Bayly).