Isabella Bird
Keddie began writing in the 1850s. Her first two novels failed to sell, however. Her first paid story was "Meg of Elibank", based on a local Selkirk tradition, which appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" in 1856. Some of her earliest publications appeared in "Blackwood's Magazine", others in "Cornhill Magazine", "Good Words" and the "Sunday Magazine". These efforts introduced her to some writers and intellectuals, such as Dr John Brown, Isabella Bird and Margaret Oliphant. Her circle grew in London to include the historian J. A. Froude, Dinah Craik, Mrs Henry Wood, Jean Ingelow and others.