Mary Elizabeth Braddon

04 October 1835 - 04 February 1915

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.

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Connections

Connections	Author name Sort ascending	Excerpt
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...
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...
Friends, Associates	Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton	His friends included Benjamin Disraeli , Charles Dickens , John Forster , and Thomas Babington Macaulay . Later in life he conducted a long, mentoring friendship by letter with Mary Elizabeth Braddon . He also...
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...
Publishing	Mary Angela Dickens	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...
Wealth and Poverty	Rhoda Broughton	RB , who published almost exclusively with Bentley throughout her career, preferred to receive a lump sum for her novels rather than to rely on royalites and copyright earnings. In her reminiscence Ethel Arnold suggests...
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.

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