Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/535

 Thurston, the novelist, that she evinced literary ability.

Her career as a writer began with 'The Circle' (1903), which, if less sensational than her subsequent novels, showed originality. In 1904 she acquired wide fame through the publication of 'John Chilcote, M.P.,' which appeared simultaneously in America under the title of 'The Masquerader.' Mrs. Thurston handled an improbable story of impersonation and mistaken identity with much skill and force. None of her subsequent works attained the same degree of popularity. 'The Gambler' (1906), a brightly written study of Irish life and scenery, was followed by 'The Mystics' (1907) and 'The Fly on the Wheel' (1908), novels of a more conventional type. In 'Max' (1910) Mrs. Thurston repeatad with less success a story of impersonation. In all her work a genuine gift for story-telling is combined with a fluent style and signs of intellectual insight.

Meanwhile domestic disagreements arose with her husband, and on 7 April 1910 she obtained a decree nisi. Mrs. Thurston, who was of delicate health, suffered periodically from fainting fits. She died from asphyxia during a seizure at Moore's Hotel, Cork, on 5 Sept. 1911. She was buried in the family grave at Cork. The bulk of her property passed to her executor, A. T. Bulkeley Gavin, M.D.



TINSLEY, WILLIAM (1831–1902), publisher, born in 1831, was the son of a Hertfordshire gamekeeper. He was educated at a dame's school, and as a child worked in the fields. He came to London in 1852 and obtained employment at Notting Hill. He joined his younger brother Edward in the publishing business of Tinsley Brothers in Holywell Street, Strand, in 1854. They afterwards moved to Catherine Street, Strand. After issuing some small volumes of essays by W. B. Jerrold and J. E. Ritchie, their first serious venture was G. A. Sala's novel 'The Seven Sons of Mammon' (1861). The next success of the firm was with Miss Braddon's (Mrs. Maxwell) 'Lady Audley's Secret' (1862) and 'Aurora Floyd' (1863). They published 'The New Quarterly Review' (1854-9), but lost money in supporting ’The Library Company,' founded to rival Messrs. Mudie's and Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son's circulating libraries. Edward Tinsley died at a little over the age of thirty in 1866 {Athen(mm, 22 Sept. 1866). In 1868 Tinsley started 'Tinsley's Magazine,' which was for some time edited by Edmund Yates and afterwards by the publisher himself; it continued till 1881. For many years the firm was the chief producer of novels and light literature in London. Among the authors whose works were issued by the Tinsleys were Ouida (Louise de la Ramée), William Black, Thomas Hardy, Sir W. H. Russell, J. S. Le Fanu, Joseph Hatton, Tom Hood, Blanchard Jerrold, Justin McCarthy, Andrew Halliday, Mrs. Cashel Hoey, Sir Walter Besant. Viscount Morley, Benjamin Leopold Farjeon, George Meredith, G. A. Lawrence (Guy Livingstone), Mrs. Henry Wood, Edmund Yates, Henry Kingsley, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Riddell, Rhoda Broughton, Jean Ingelow, Mrs. OUphant, Florence Marryat, Anthony Trollope, Mortimer Collins, Wilkie Collins, James Payn, Sir Richard Burton, George MacDonald, Captain Mayne Reid, W. Harrison Ainsworth, Ameha B. Edwards, George A. Henty, G. Manville Fenn, and Alfred Austin.

In 1878 Tinsley failed, with liabilities amounting to about 33,000l. He published in 1900 his reminiscences of the authors and actors he had known, under the title of 'Random Recollections of an Old Publisher,' 2 vols., with a photogravure after a photograph. He died at Wood Green, Middlesex, on 1 May 1902.



TODD, CHARLES (1826–1910), government astronomer and postmaster-general of the colony of South Australia, born at Islington, London, on 7 July 1826, was elder son of George Todd, a grocer at Greenwich. Charles in 1841, at the age of fifteen, obtained employment in the Royal Observatory as a super-numerary computer under Sir George Airy, the astronomer royal. He held the post, except for a few months' interval, until the end of 1847. Early next year he became assistant astronomer at the Cambridge University observatory, where, being in charge of the large telescope, the Northumberland equatorial, he was one of the earliest observers of the planet Neptune ( discovered in 1846), and with the same 