Read it through once

Talfourd wrote urging her to a novel, but this she wisely declined, and commenced to work, in great haste on still another tragedy which had been suggested by a re-reading of Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. It was no new project, for she had written of it “in strict confidence” to Sir William Elford more than a year before, but it had been left to lie fallow until an opportunity arose for its execution. When the suggestion was made to Macready he at once saw the possibilities in the theme and promised to give the play his best consideration, although he made the significant suggestion that not only should the author’s name be kept a dead secret, but that the play should be produced under a man’s name because the newspapers of the day were so unfair to female writers.