Edna Lyall

Edna Lyall was Ada Ellen Bayly, a clergyman's daughter who took a near-anagram of her own name and used it to write novels that argued: for the rights of atheists, for Irish Home Rule, for women's suffrage. Donovan, her defence of an honest unbeliever, was admired by Gladstone. She was frail, shy and lived quietly with her sister; her books sold in the hundreds of thousands.