ABSTRACT
Edmund Yates was born in 1831, of famous theatrical parents: his father, Frederick was a Shakespearian actor-manager, who had married Elizabeth Brunton, a leading member of his company, in 1823. ‘Certainly one of the most daring and curious cases of the kind was carried on for some years between Mrs. Cashel Hoey and Edmund Yates. Edwards himself sums up: Mrs Hoey’s references to the affair implicitly confirm all but one of Tinsley’s assertions. They make it clear that she did regard herself as author or joint-author of some of Yates’s novels, presumably the ones that Tinsley named. Edwards agrees that ‘they tend to support Tinsley’s account rather than that of T. H. S. Escott’, an erstwhile friend of Yates who made occasional and apparently unsolicited assertions that Mrs Hoey had nothing to do with any novels published in Yates’s name.
