This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 15 February 1830, Ireland
Died: 9 July 1908
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Mrs Cashel Hoey, Frances Hoey
Hoey, Frances Sarah (Mrs Cashel Hoey) (née Johnston ) (1830–1908), novelist and journalist, was born 15 February 1830 in Bushy Park, Terenure, Dublin, one of eight children of Charles Bolton Johnston, secretary and registrar of Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin, and his wife Charlotte Jane (née Shaw), a relation of George Bernard Shaw. Following an education at home, largely by herself, on her sixteenth birthday she married Adam Murray Stewart, with whom she had two daughters. She began her career as a journalist in 1853, publishing essays on art in the Nation and the Freeman’s Journal. Through this work she gained entry into leading nationalist circles, associating with many from the Young Ireland movement. Soon after the death of her husband in November 1855 she moved to London and, armed with an introduction from William Carleton to William Thackeray, set about making an impression on the London literary scene. Her second marriage, to Young Irelander John Cashel Hoey in February 1858, coincided with her conversion to catholicism. She was extremely devout, and is known to have published at least one devotional book, entitled Nazareth (1873).
After initial difficulty, Hoey established herself in London as a prolific journalist, contributing a diverse range of articles, reviews, and fiction to many periodicals, including the Morning Post, the Spectator, Chamber’s Journal, the Dublin Review, Temple Bar, Tinsley’s Magazine, Belgravia, All the Year Round, and the World. She assisted the Scottish journalist and writer Edmund Yates in launching the last-named in 1874, and for over thirty years produced the weekly column the ‘Lady’s Letter’ for the Australasian. A regular visitor to France, she reported her impressions of the Paris Commune in ‘ “Red” Paris in Easter week’, which appeared in both the Spectator and St Paul’s Magazine. Hoey also produced some eleven novels, mostly fast-paced pot-boilers with high-society settings, of which the best known are The house of cards (1868), Falsely true (1870), The question of Cain (1882), and A stern chase (1886). She is thought to have collaborated on at least five novels (dating between 1866 and 1870) solely attributed to Yates. Though her fiction generally gives no indication of her political convictions as an Irish nationalist, or indeed of her nationality at all, on a few occasions she abandoned her exotic backdrops for an Irish setting, notably in Out of court (1874) and novellas such as The queen’s token and No sign (both 1875). She translated many French and Italian works, often in conjunction with John Lillie, and worked occasionally as a publisher’s reader.
While she and her husband appear to have had a comfortable lifestyle (Sir Charles Gavan Duffy described their Kensington home as a ‘well appointed house’ with ‘excellent servants’), they had many demands on their income, and Hoey’s financial earnings were always important. Her faith, often evident in her novels, was also apparent in her generous assistance to various charities, including the Anti-Vivisection League and the Society for Sick Children. Her charitable donations increasingly proved an economic strain, and she encountered financial difficulties after the death of her husband in 1892. Her income in later years became largely dependent on the civil-list pension of £50 awarded 15 August 1892. Described in The Times as a writer ‘of the old school’, by the early 1900s there was little demand for her work, and she spent her last years living alternately in Malvern, Bath, Boulogne, and Ireland. She died 9 July 1908 in Beccles, Suffolk, and was buried in the grounds of the Benedictine church at Little Malvern.