John Maxwell

While appearing on stage MEB must have found it a challenge to protect herself from unwanted sexual attentions. She attracted the attention, apparently without meeting disapproval from her mother, of newspaper proprietor Charles Bray (who...

MEB and her publisher John Maxwell were living together out of wedlock.

Newspapers spread, apparently at publisher John Maxwell 's behest, the story that he and MEB had recently married; this rumour was soon discredited when his wife's family publicly protested.

As soon after the death of his first wife as he was legally able, John Maxwell finally married MEB , after a thirteen-year common-law relationship.

John Maxwell , publisher and husband of MEB , died of influenza.

The Welcome Guest (published by John Maxwell ) printed MEB 's now well-known ghost story The Cold Embrace, before she had taken up residence in London to live by writing.

Having several completed novels in hand, she was able to take it easy in the period following his death; her break from writing at this time was the first since the outset of her career...

The full title was Lucius Davoren; or, Publicans and Sinners, and it too appeared as by the author of Lady Audley's Secret. This contract left her free to earn additional money for the...

Publisher John Maxwell launched the Halfpenny Journal to appeal to the educated working class. MEB wrote most of the material: seven or eight anonymous or pseudonymous novels over the next four years.

Further early short fiction by MEB appeared in The Welcome Guest, a John Maxwell publication that sold for twopence and aimed at the educated working classes. My Daughters, which appeared on 20 October...

From late 1861 MEB published in her future husband John Maxwell 's Temple Bar, edited by George Augustus Sala , a periodical which aimed to compete with the prestigious Cornhill Magazine. In...

A subplot excised in revision as Henry Dunbar was recycled into the short story Lost and Found: this removed the bigamy and blackmail from the novel. This time the novel in book form was...

Periodicals were vital to MEB 's career from the beginning. Having set out by regularly contributing sensational fiction to the Halfpenny Journal, she continued to provide articles in, for example, Punch and The World...

After this bad beginning, the book garnered no critical attention until MEB revised and reissued it in 1861, after the publication of Lady Audley's Secret, as The Trail of the Serpent. Sales were...

The same Gazette piece also drew attention to John Maxwell 's dubious advertising practices. A minor scandal ensued in a number of journals, fuelled by a forged letter from MEB as editor, claiming ignorance...