Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
-
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.
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...
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
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
Bulwer's Newgate novels were insistently skewered by William Maginn
, and after 1836 by Thackeray
, in Fraser's Magazine.
Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
Paul Clifford and Bulwer's later Lucretia (1846, based on an actual poisoning case) were singled...
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...
Friends, Associates
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
MAD
published Miss Braddon at Home, her interview with Mary Elizabeth Braddon
, in The Windsor Magazine: For Men and Women.
Dickens, Mary Angela. “Miss Braddon at Home”. The Windsor Magazine: For Men and Women, Vol.
6
, No. 33, pp. 415-18.
415-18
Literary responses
Ethel M. Dell
In response to a compliment on her writing EMD
replied, they are not well written and will never be called classics.
Dell, Penelope. Nettie and Sissie. Hamish Hamilton.
129
Highbrow journals at her death were careful not to praise. The Times Literary...
Textual Features
Ella D'Arcy
Perhaps aimed at a Temple Bar formula, it has thriller-style action and stilted dialogue which suggests a sensation novel by Wilkie Collins
or Mary Elizabeth Braddon
, but which proved not to be D'Arcy territory...
Reception
Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White, along with Ellen Wood
's East Lynne,1861, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon
's Lady Audley's Secret, 1862, established the massive popularity of the sensation novel, a genre marked by...
Literary responses
Georgiana Chatterton
Henry Fothergill Chorley
in the Athenæum wrote that this work had come from the pen of an amiable and accomplished lady and that it could only be described as an amazing production.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1879 (1863): 566
Textual Features
Charlotte Chanter
Critic John Sutherland discerns the influence of Wilkie Collins
on the novel's plot. Certainly the figure of the mysterious woman in black who aims to avenge herself on her husband's destroyers recalls the description of...
Literary responses
Rosa Nouchette Carey
The Athenæum was lavish with faint praise. It likened Only the Governess to a tranquil backwater out of the main current of the turbid stream of modern fiction.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3151 (1888): 337
Praising Carey for not...
Friends, Associates
Rhoda Broughton
The sisters were in general popular in Oxford society, but Rhoda, although at first she dined regularly at the table of scholar Benjamin Jowett
,
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(29 November 1940): 5
, was then ostracized in some...
Friends, Associates
Rhoda Broughton
RB
's vitality, sincerity, and pungent wit gained her the friendship of some of the most notable people of her day.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Her wide circle of friends and acquaintances included Henry James
(the two became extremely...