She went blind when she was 11 but had her sight restored by Sir William Wilde.
However one of her novels Erin: A Story of Today was published at about the same time as the Phoenix Park Murders which damaged her reputation and resulted in a loss of sales for her.
As a result, she required support from the Royal Literary Fund to survive.
[1][2][3][4][5] The timing of a story calling for greater understanding between Ireland and England in a time when the political situation between the two countries was tense and two senior officials had just been murdered by radical rebels meant that Casey was treated very badly by the press.
In the London Athenaeum review on 20 May 1882 the press called Blackburne "a thoroughgoing partisan of the Land League".