'HOPPER, Miss Edna Wallace:
'Comedienne and light opera singer, was born in San Francisco, Cal., her father being Walter Wallace, a baseball scorer and theatre usher of that city. After his death her mother was married to Alexander Dunsmuir, a Canadian, who lived in San Francisco. He died in New York in January, 1900, forty days after his marriage to Mrs. Wallace, leaving a fortune valued at between eight and ten million dollars to his brother, James Dunsmuir, ex-Premier of British Columbia. His widow compromised her claim on the estate for an annuity of $25,000, which ceased at her death. After her death Edna Wallace brought suit in the Canadian courts, where the will was probated, for one-third of the estate, to which her mother was entitled under the laws of California. The Canadian courts upheld the will, and the case was taken by Miss Hopper to the Privy Council, the British court of last resort, in London. Edna Wallace was educated at Vanness Seminary, San Francisco. The late Roland Reed was responsible for her desire to become an actress. He met her when she was about seventeen years old, and jokingly offered her a place in his company which was then playing in San Francisco. Although her parents did not approve of it, she accepted the offer and August 17, 1891, made her first stage appearance with Mr. Reed's company at the Boston Museum as Mabel Douglass in The Club Friend. Two weeks later she made her first New York appearance, playing the same part at the Star Theatre where, six weeks later, she played the ingénue rôle in Lend Me Your Wife. Her work attracting the approval of Charles Frohman, he engaged her for his forces, and with them she appeared as Lucy Morton in Jane, Mrs. Patterby in Chums, Margery in Men and Women, and Wilbur's Ann in The Girl I Left Behind Me. In the last-named her playing received most favourable comment. She was married to De Wolf Hopper June 28, 1895, while she was playing Wilbur's Ann, becoming Mr. Hopper's third wife. A few weeks afterward, Della Fox becoming ill, Miss Hopper jumped into her part as Paquita in Panjandrum, and made of her first essay in the comic opera field a remarkable success. Thereafter she played with her husband as Merope Mallow in Dr. Syntax, Mataya in Wang, and created in April, 1896, the part of Estrelda in El Capitan, by John Philip Sousa. The Hoppers had domestic difficulties, separated in 1898, and were divorced, Mr. Hopper marrying Miss [Nella] Bergen. Thereafter Edna Wallace Hopper appeared [on tour] in Yankee Doodle Dandy, an extravaganza; [as Orestes] with Lillian Russell in a revival of La Belle Helene [at the Casino, New York, 12 January 1899], and in 1899-1900 with Jerome Sykes [at the Victoria Theatre, New York, 1 January 1900] in the extravaganza Chris and the Wonderful Lamp, acting the rôle of Chris. The season of 1905-6 she played in vaudeville. The season of 1906-7 she was a member of Lew Fields's company in About Town. In [February] 1908 she starred in George M. Cohan's Fifty Miles from Boston [Garrick Theatre, New York]. Her address is 863 Seventh avenue, New York.'
(Walter Browne and E. De Roy Koch, Who's Who on The Stage, B.W. Dodge & Co, New York, 1908, pp.242 and 243)

'At the turn of the century the prevalence of feminine sensuality in other forms of popular entertainment provided a serious challenge to burlesque. Yankee Doodle Dandy, an 1898 musical comedy, featured Edna Wallace Hopper's long, slender legs and trim figure. "Realizing that she had not much to warble," a reviewer observed, she "is very generous in the display of her proportions, and by dispensing with the formality of trunks makes the best use of her resources".'
(Robert C. Toll, On With the Show, Oxford University Press, 1976, p.225)