Lyall, EDNA

Lyall, EDNA, the pen-name of Ada Ellen Bayly, author of several popular novels written with a purpose, was born and educated at Brighton, had vague ideas of becoming a novelist even in her tenth year, and at school wrote a good deal of amateur fiction. Her first novel, Won by Waiting (1879), was followed by her most popular story, Donovan (1882), written at Lincoln, with its sequel We Two (1884); these are a plea for that charity which takes no account of even the sharpest differences in creed and religion. Her other books are In the Golden Days (1885); Knight Errant (1887), partly written in Italy, where most of the ideas for this novel were derived; Autobiography of a Slander (1887); Derrick Vaughan and A Hardy Norseman (1889); and a child's book, Their Happiest Christmas (1889). Her novels are characterised by thought and quiet humour; her descriptions of both nature and human nature are usually vivid and graceful, and coloured by her own experience of travel. Most of her tales turn on self-sacrifice, while the Autobiography of a Slander is directed against the sins of the tongue. She conceives her characters first, then surrounds them with the chain of circumstance for the due development of the story. Like George Eliot with the Liggins imposture, the real 'Edna Lyall' has had to assert herself against an impostor in Ceylon who had adopted her name. Statistics of the books read at several libraries show Edna Lyall's novels to have been most in demand over a certain period.