[citation needed] In 1853 she began to contribute reviews and articles on fine art to Freeman's Journal, The Nation, and other Dublin papers and periodicals.
In a previously unpublished letter dated 3 February 1935, commenting on a family photo, George Bernard Shaw wrote:"I cannot identify the lady in the riding habit, although her face and bearing are so familiar to me that I think I must have seen her.
The very uncorseted matron on the right is Mrs. Cashel Hoey (Fanny Hoy) Johnston's eldest daughter, who scandalised the family by going to London and earning her living as author (novelist), journalist, reviewer, and "ghost" to literary men who were too lazy to write their own novels, notably Edmund Yates.
Fanny was a tremendous talker, with the art of making her acquaintances believe that she was intensely interested in them, and that her importance and influence in literary London were limitless.
Until 1894 she was a constant contributor, writing articles, short stories, and two serial novels, A Golden Sorrow (1892) and The Blossoming of an Aloe (1894).
[citation needed] According to Elizabeth Lee in the old Dictionary of National Biography, Hoey was also largely responsible for Land at Last (1866), Black Sheep (1867), Forlorn Hope (1867), Rock Ahead (1868), and A Righted Wrong (1870).
[1] P. D. Edwards in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes this account, circulated by Anthony Trollope who held a grudge against Yates, as "probably spurious".
[2] Hoey was a reader for publishers at various times, and was the first to send a Lady's Letter to an Australian paper, which she did for 20 years.