Bayly was born in Brighton, the youngest of four children of a barrister. Early in life she lost both her parents, so that she spent her youth with an uncle in
Surrey and in a
Brighton private school. Bayly never married. She seems to have spent her adult life living with her two married sisters and her brother, a clergyman in
Bosbury,
Herefordshire. In 1879, she published her first novel,
Won by Waiting, under the pseudonym "Edna Lyall" (apparently derived from transposing letters from Ada Ellen Bayly). The book was not a success. Success came with
We Two, based on the life of
Charles Bradlaugh, a social reformer and advocate of free thought. Her historical novel
In the Golden Days was the last book read to
John Ruskin on his deathbed; while
Hope the Hermit was a bestseller set in the
Lake District and later an inspiration for
Hugh Walpole's
Rogue Herries.
To Right the Wrong (2nd ed. 1894) is a historical novel about
John Hampden and the
English Civil War. Part of her success was due to her practice of using characters from one novel in a different capacity in her next. ==Selected works==