John Maxwell

In June of 1874 MEB and John Maxwell went on a two-week tour of Ireland.

In the later 1870s MEB and John Maxwell built a country home in the New Forest, in the village of Bank (or Annesley Bank).

After Maxwell retired in 1887, his publishing house still covered their household expenses, and MEB saved all of her substantial earnings from her writing. In 1893 she purchased yet another house near her family's estate...

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...

She left a remarkably large estate for a Victorian woman writer. Despite the high style in which she lived, she was reportedly able from early in her career to save her literary earnings, since money...

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...

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...

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

A small scandal erupted in 1867 when the Athenæum pointed out that MEB 's Nobody's Daughter; or, The Ballad-Singer of Wapping, was in fact the same as the previously serialised Diavola; or, The Woman's...

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.

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...

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