Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 – 4 February 1915) was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret.

Contents

Life

Born in London England, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was three. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years in order to support herself and her mother.

In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell, a publisher of periodicals. She started living with him in 1861. However, Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was living in an asylum in Ireland. Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to get married. She had six children by him, including the novelist William Babington Maxwell.

Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition as well as fortune. The novel has been in print ever since its publication, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Braddon also founded Belgravia magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialised sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history and science. The magazine was accompanied by lavish illustrations and offered readers a source of literature at an affordable cost. She also edited Temple Bar magazine. Braddon's legacy is tied to the sensation fiction of the 1860s.

She died on 4 February 1915 in Richmond, Surrey, and is interred in Richmond Cemetery. Her home had been Lichfield House in the centre of town; it was replaced by a block of flats in 1936, Lichfield Court, now listed. She has a plaque in Richmond parish church which calls her simply 'Miss Braddon'. A number of streets in the area are named after characters in her novels; her husband was a property developer in the area.

Partial bibliography

Novels

  • The Trail of the Serpent (1860)
  • The Octoroon (1861)
  • The Black Band (1861)
  • Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
  • John Marchmont's Legacy (1862–3)
  • The Captain of the Vulture (1863)
  • Aurora Floyd (1863)
  • Eleanor's Victory (1863)
  • Henry Dunbar: the Story of an Outcast (1864)
  • The Doctor's Wife (1864)
  • Only a Clod (1865)
  • Circe (1867)
  • Rupert Godwin (1867)
  • Dead-Sea Fruit (1868)
  • Fenton's Quest (1871)
  • To the Bitter End (1872)
  • Robert Ainsleigh (1872)
  • Publicans and Sinners (1873)
  • Lost For Love (1874)
  • Taken at the Flood (1874)
  • A Strange World (1875)
  • Hostages to Fortune (1875)
  • Joseph Haggard (1876)
  • Dead Men's Shoes (1876)
  • An Open Verdict (1878)
  • The Cloven Foot (1879)
  • Vixen (1879)
  • Asphodel (1881)
  • Phantom Fortune (1883)
  • The Golden Calf (1883)
  • Ishmael. A Novel (1884)
  • Wyllard's Weird (1885)
  • Cut by the County (1887)
  • The Fatal Three (1888)
  • One Life, One Love (1890)
  • The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1891)
  • The Venetians (1892)
  • The Christmas Hirelings (1894)
  • Thou Art The Man (1894)
  • Sons of Fire (1895)
  • London Pride (1896)
  • Rough Justice (1898)
  • His Darling Sin (1899)
  • The Infidel (1900)
  • The White House (1906)
  • Dead Love Has Chains (1907)
  • During Her Majesty's Pleasure (1908)

Collections

Theatre

Dramatisations of her works

Several of Braddon's works were dramatised for the stage in London and elsewhere, notably:

References

Notes

  1. ^ G. C. Boase, Megan A. Stephan, "Hazlewood, Colin Henry (1823–1875)", rev. Megan A. Stephan, (quoting The Britannia diaries, 1863–1875: selections from the diaries of Frederick C. Wilton, ed. J. Davis (1992)) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (accessed 3 December 2011)
  2. ^ G. C. Boase, Megan A. Stephan, "Hazlewood, Colin Henry (1823–1875)", rev. Megan A. Stephan, (quoting The Britannia diaries, 1863–1875: selections from the diaries of Frederick C. Wilton, ed. J. Davis (1992)) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (accessed 3 December 2011)

Bibliography

  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 58. 
  • Diamond, Michael. Victorian Sensation. London: Anthem (2003) ISBN 1-84331-150-X, pp. 191–192

External links