Edmund Yates

A carte-de-visite portrait of the journalist and editor Edmund Yates. A friend of Charles Dickens, he was also a dramatic author, novelist, lecturer and performer.

After 25 years working as a clerk in the General Post Office while contributing to various journals and writing novels on the side, in 1874 he founded his own weekly, The World. Its most popular feature was a gossip column entitled ‘What the world says’ but in 1883 Yates included a paragraph on the irregular love life of Lord Lonsdale and was sued for criminal libel. He was sentenced to four months in prison and although he only served 7 weeks, his health was broken by the experience and he never fully recovered.

He died at the Savoy Hotel on 20 May 1894, having suffered a seizure at the Garrick Club the previous night.

Photographed by Adolphe Beau of London.