Edmund Hodgson Yates (1831-94) was a British journalist, novelist and dramatist. He was born in Edinburgh and educated at Highgate School in London from 1840-46 before taking a position as clerk in the General Post Office. He then embarked on a career in journalism, working on the Court Journal and then the Daily News. His first book, My Haunts and their Frequenters, was published in 1854, followed by a succession of novels and plays. As a contributor to All the Year Round and Household Words he became a friend of Charles Dickens and at one time was his near neighbour in Doughty Street. He was perhaps best known as proprietor and editor of The World, a society newspaper he established with Eustace Clare Grenville Murray and edited under the pen name of Atlas. In 1884 he was sentenced to 4 months' imprisonment for libelling Lord Lonsdale, but some years later enjoyed a second career as a county magistrate. This novel first published in 1874 set in the milieu of the English aristocracy spins a web of romance and society intrigue, the plot echoing that of his earlier success Running the Gauntlet (1865), with the unhappily married Lady Forestfield first sighted by the hero at a London theatre.