Edna Lyall
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A highly popular writer,
published eighteen novels or novellas between 1879 and 1902, as well as a play, an account of her childhood which she designed for young readers, and shorter pieces. Several of her novels are historical, some take up contemporary political isues. Though her plots are melodramatic, her people often verging on caricature, and her appetite for virtuous self-sacrifice immense, she is interestingly radical in her political sympathies and unconventional in her habit of choosing outsiders like foreigners, non-Christians, or activists, for her exemplary characters. She remained a byword for big sales, if not for artistry, past the mid twentieth century.- BirthName: Ada Ellen BaylyShe was named Ada after the beautiful and idealistic Ada of Bleak House.'s
- Nickname: EllieThis family nickname was another literary reference: to The Wide Wide World, 1851, by .
- Pseudonyms: Edna Lyall; Auntie ElfieShe formed her pseudonym by transposing nine letters of her three names.Having chosen to write under this name, presumably from motives of secrecy or discretion, she later rather regretted it.