ABSTRACT
George Augustus Sala had suggested the magazine to John Maxwell, who financed it, as a rival to the Cornhill. Sala gave up the editorship in 1863, and Yates took over. He remained as editor when Temple Bar was sold to Bentley in 1866, but continued in the job for only about twelve months, until he was appointed by William Tinsley to be the founding editor of Tinsleys ‘Magazine. Sala’s biographer, Ralph Straus, wrote: to the author it is little astonishing that so much praise was lavished at the time on this undoubtedly exciting but wildly melodramatic romance. The temporary but abrupt deterioration in Sala’s work resulted largely from a personal failure of judgement by Dickens. He was not at fault in his appreciation of Sala’s unusual talent a writer; Sala’s skill was in many, if lesser, ways similar to his own. Meanwhile Sala’s letters to the Daily Telegraph had been extremely well received by both its owners and its readers.
