Frances Cashel Hoey (1830–1908)

Frances Cashel Hoey, née Frances Sarah Johnston, was born in Bushy Park, Dublin, to an Anglo-Irish family.
She was largely self-educated. In 1846, at age 16,

she married Adam Murray Stewart, with whom she had two daughters. In 1853, she began to contribute reviews and articles on fine art to Freeman's Journal, The Nation, and other Dublin papers and periodicals. After her first husband died in 1856, Frances moved to London, where she wrote for The Morning Post and The Spectator.
Two years later, she married John Cashel Hoey, also a journalist, and converted to his Roman Catholic faith.
Over the following 40 or so years, Frances Cashel Hoey wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, and reviews, most of them unsigned. She achieved a journalistic coup in 1871, when after making one of her frequent visits to Paris, she returned to London the next day with the news of the start of the Paris Commune on March 18 and published an article called "Red Paris" in The Spectator. In addition, she wrote 11 novels, some of which were also popular in Canada and the USA. She also worked as a reader for publishers and translated 27 works from the French and Italian, seven in collaboration with John Lillie.