Edmund Hodgson Yates was a British journalist, author, and dramatist. He was born in Edinburgh to Frederick Henry Yates, an actor and theater manager, and attended Highgate School in London from 1840 to 1846, then Düsseldorf. His first job was as a clerk at the General Post Office, where he rose to the position of chief of the lost letter department in 1862 and remained there until 1872. Meanwhile, he began working in journalism, first for the Court Journal and subsequently for the Daily News, under Charles Dickens. In 1854 he released his debut book, My Haunts and their Frequenters, followed by a string of novels and plays. In 1858, Yates was appointed editor of Town Talk, a new newspaper. His first issue had a laudatory piece on Dickens, and the second was a critical one on Thackeray, with several intimate references to private things. Thackeray brought the essay before the Garrick Club's committee, claiming that Yates had used it improperly, and as a result, Yates was banished. Yates, in addition to publishing Temple Bar and Tinsley's Magazine, began lecturing on social issues in the 1860s and authored several works, notably the novel Black Sheep (1867). He maintained the type of column he had started in the Illustrated Times in the Morning Star, under the title "Le Flaneur".
