Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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Standard Name: Braddon, Mary Elizabeth
Birth Name: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Pseudonym: Mary Seyton
Pseudonym: Babington White
Pseudonym: Lady Caroline Lascelles
Pseudonym: Aunt Belinda
Pseudonym: The author of Lady Audley's Secret
Self-constructed Name: M. E. Braddon
Married Name: Mary Elizabeth Maxwell
Used Form: Miss M. E. Braddon
MEB made her name, scandalously, in the early 1860s as a founder of the intricately plotted sensation novel, and was particularly known for her transgressive heroines. Although still most strongly associated with this and the related genres of gothic, mystery and detective stories, she also contributed significantly during her 56-year career to the psychological and realist novels, in addition to writing several dramas (some of them produced) and publishing in her youth one long poem in a collection with shorter ones. Dedicated to writing for the new and expanding mass reading public (including fiction for the penny press), and associated from the outset with novel advertising and publishing practices, she issued her work serially, edited Belgravia magazine from 1866 to 1876 (as well as a Christmas annual), and survived the demise of the triple-decker novel.
Painting of Mary Elizabeth Braddon by William Powell Frith, exhibited 1865. She stands beside a desk with writing materials and stacks of books, looking at the viewer, in a long dark dress. The wall behind her and the desk chair are red. Her red-brown hair is coiled over her ears, and her clasped hands hold a handkerchief. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Anna Steele
AS has been largely ignored by readers and critics since her death, and her works remain out of print. Her name occurs in biographies of her more famous relatives, and in 1929 her niece Minna Evangeline Bradhurst
Literary responses George Eliot
Lewes , who wrote that if the book was not a hit I will never more trust my judgement in such matters,
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press.
3: 10
was vindicated when printing after printing was called for (15,000 copies...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
Reviewers were pleased to see more fiction from Lehmann after nine years, and the book was popular, although not hugely applauded. Those praising it included Edwin Muir . There was much debate over the real-life...
Literary responses Rhoda Broughton
Eliza Lynn Linton , in an article that was in general highly complimentary, defended RB 's characterisation of Lenore: She is irritating and faulty, but not corrupt. Her temper and her taste are both equally...
Leisure and Society Emmuska, Baroness Orczy
Music was very important to EBO (though she says she had inexplicably little talent), and she gives one of the five books of her memoirs to her musical life. She heard Edvard Grieg conducting his...
Leisure and Society Queen Victoria
Among her favourite writers were Alfred Tennyson , Sir Walter Scott , George Eliot (whose The Mill on the Floss made a deep impression
Victoria, Queen. Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals. Editor Hibbert, Christopher, Penguin.
116
on her), and Charles Kingsley , whose Two Years Ago...
Intertextuality and Influence Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
This was among his most controversial novels; W. Fraser Rae later praised it in his attack on Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's sensation fiction, and George Sala cited it as a laudable antecedent in her defence.
Rae, W. Fraser. “Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon”. North British Review, Vol.
43
, pp. 180-04.
202
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland.
206
Intertextuality and Influence Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
Bulwer-Lytton in his later years mentored the young Mary Elizabeth Braddon , offering her advice on her writings, often with reference to his own. Their literary friendship lasted until his death. Charles Reade was also...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Atkins
Though AA 's preface concedes the the talent, the ingenuity, the very clever writing of sensation-authors,
Atkins, Anna. A Page from the Peerage. T. Cautley Newby.
i
it also hints that they are in it for the money, and expresses outrage at what it sees...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Anne Barker
MAB 's discussion of schools leads her into an account of a visit made by the Norwegian missionary, Bishop Schreuder , to a later Zulu chief, Cetshwayo , taken from a blue-book or government report...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Mary Brame
Published with an epigraph from Anne Hunter about the emotional cost of keeping a painful secret, Lady Damer's Secret presumably drew inspiration for its title from Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Lady Audley's Secret, although...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
Several shorter stories are gems. Two of them explore respectively the experiences of birth and of death, from the viewpoint of those on the fringes of the central event. Many stories are hard on women...
Intertextuality and Influence Flora Thompson
From her account it is clear how she respects, even loves, the people she describes, but also how she is not one of them, but is marked off by tiny gradations of knowledge and privilege...
Intertextuality and Influence Rhoda Broughton
Esther Craven, this novel's unworldly heroine, lives in an isolated farmhouse in the Welsh countryside and dreams of a romantic hero in a fashion reminiscent of Isobel Gilbert in Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's The Doctor's Wife.
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Gaskell
The book was well received. The situation and character of its father and daughter probably informed Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Joshua Haggard's Daughter (1877).

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