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
Reception Ouida
Within a few years of her first novel's publication, Ouida had attained some celebrity as a writer, but not all the attention she received was positive. While her sales were strong, she was attacked for...
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...
Textual Features Elizabeth Gaskell
Some of the lesser characters are interesting. Sally, the crusty but faithful servant, presses her savings on her employers when they fall on hard times; she was satirised by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Rupert Godwin...
Textual Features Dorothy L. Sayers
Here she mounts a powerful appreciation of the novel, both for its importance in the development of the detective story (all the clues, she says, are clearly conveyed to the reader, something which seldom happened...
Textual Features James Malcolm Rymer
The penny dreadful genre borrowed much from the chapbook tradition both in textual production and readership, as well as from the gothic, depicting scenes of violent crime, horror, and the supernatural. E. F. Bleiler ...
Textual Features Ellen Wood
The plot and pacing of the novel differ markedly from East Lynne, and are more in the style of Charlotte Yonge than EW 's sensational contemporary Mary Elizabeth Braddon . While the theft of...
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...
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...
Textual Features Margaret Oliphant
Oliphant develops an extended critique of her chief bugbears, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (the leader of her school
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
102
, W. Blackwood, Sept. 1867, pp. 257-80.
265
), Rhoda Broughton (not by name, but as author of Cometh Up As a Flower),...
Textual Features Sophie Veitch
The interdependence of her passionate feelings, athleticism, and goodness is made evident in her foil, Edith Cranley (later Edith Mason). Edith is a perfect little lady,
Veitch, Sophie. The Dean’s Daughter. National Publishing Company, 1889.
8
but she is also weak and selfish, while...
Textual Production Elizabeth Helme
This book bore the author's name as Elizabeth Helme, Jun. and its preface warns that spoiling children may lead them to rush into the vortex of vice and folly
Somerville, Elizabeth Helme. James Manners, Little John, and Their Dog Bluff. Darton and Harvey, 1799.
iii
(a phrase characteristic of sensation...
Textual Production Mary Fortune
If MF is indeed the author of either The Stolen Specimens or Traces of Crime, then she is, Lucy Sussex argues, the earliest known female writer of detective fiction. Both stories pre-date the serialization...
Textual Production Henry James
Although HJ is best remembered as a novelist, he was also a prolific and insightful critic of literature and the arts. Over the course of his career he reviewed many novels by British women writers...
Textual Production Ellen Wood
The novel had been twice offered to the publishing house of Chapman and Hall , and was recommended by William Harrison Ainsworth . After their reader (novelist George Meredith ) twice rejected it, EW took...
Textual Production Bryony Lavery
BL 's numerous plays for radio include some original and some adapted from other works: Laying Ghosts, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Velma and Therese (a parallel version of the film Thelma and...

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