Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 – 4 February 1915) was a British Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 popular novelist. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel

Sensation novel

The sensation novel was a literary genre of fiction popular in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s, following on from earlier melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, which focused on tales woven around criminal biographies, also descend from the gothic and romantic genres of fiction...

 Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well known novel. Critic John Sutherland described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels." The plot centers on "accidental bigamy" which...

.

Life

Born in London in England, Braddon was privately educated and worked as an actress for three years in order to be able to support herself and her mother Fanny, who had separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was just three. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon

Edward Braddon

Sir Edward Nicholas Coventry Braddon, KCMG , Australian politician, was the Premier of Tasmania from 1894 to 1899, and was a Member of the First Australian Parliament in the House of Representatives...

 left for India

Company rule in India

Company rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent...

 and later Australia, where he would become Premier of Tasmania.

In 1860, Braddon met John Maxwell, a publisher of periodicals, whom she started living with in 1861. However, Maxwell was married with five children and his wife was living in an asylum

Psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

 in Ireland. Mary acted as the stepmother of the children till 1874, when Maxwell's wife died, and they could get married. She had six children by him, including the novelist William Babington Maxwell.

Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well known novel. Critic John Sutherland described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels." The plot centers on "accidental bigamy" which...

(1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Braddon also founded Belgravia Magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialised sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, science. The magazine was accompanied by lavish illustrations and offered readers a source of literature at an affordable cost. She also edited Temple Bar Magazine.
Braddon's legacy is tied to the sensation fiction of the 1860s.

She died on 4 February 1915 in Richmond, Surrey, England and is interred there in Richmond Cemetery. Her home had been Lichfield House in the centre of town; it was replaced by a block of flats in 1936, Lichfield Court

Lichfield Court

Completed in 1935, Lichfield Court consists of two Grade II Listed purpose built blocks of flats in fine Streamline Moderne style, situated in Richmond, London. It is built on the site of Lichfield House which was reputedly designed by Christopher Wren and built for the 1st Earl of Abergavenny...

, now listed. She has a plaque in Richmond Parish church which just calls her 'Miss Braddon' and a number of streets in the area are named after characters in her novels; her husband was a property developer in the area.

Novels

• The Trail of the Serpent (1860)
• The Octoroon (1861)
• The Black Band (1861)
• Lady Audley's Secret
  Lady Audley's Secret
  Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well known novel. Critic John Sutherland described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels." The plot centers on "accidental bigamy" which...
  
  (1862)
• John Marchmont's Legacy (1862–3)
• The Captain of the Vulture (1863)
• Aurora Floyd
  Aurora Floyd
  Aurora Floyd is a 1912 American silent short drama film directed by Theodore Marston based on a novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Starring William Garwood, Florence La Badie and Harry Benham...
  
  (1863)
• Eleanor's Victory (1863)
• Henry Dunbar: the Story of an Outcast (1864)
• The Doctor's Wife (1864)
• Only a Clod (1865)
• Circe (1867)
• Rupert Godwin (1867)
• Dead-Sea Fruit (1868)
• Fenton's Quest (1871)
• To the Bitter End (1872)
• Robert Ainsleigh (1872)
• Publicans and Sinners (1873)
• Lost For Love (1874)
• Taken at the Flood (1874)
• A Strange World (1875)
• Hostages to Fortune (1875)
• Joseph Haggard (1876)

• Dead Men's Shoes (1876)
• An Open Verdict (1878)
• The Cloven Foot (1879)
• Vixen (1879)
• Asphodel
  Asphodel
  Asphodelus ramosus, also known as Branched asphodel, is a perennial herb in the Asparagales order. Similar in appearance to Asphodelus albus and particularly Asphodelus cerasiferus, it may be distinguished by its highly branched stem and smaller fruits.In addition, at least on the Catalan coast...
  
  (1881)
• Phantom Fortune (1883)
• The Golden Calf (1883)
• Ishmael. A Novel (1884)
• Wyllard's Weird (1885)
• Cut by the County (1887)
• The Fatal Three (1888)
• One Life, One Love (1890)
• The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1891)
• The Venetians (1892)
• The Christmas Hirelings (1894)
• Thou Art The Man (1894)
• Sons of Fire (1895)
• London Pride (1896)
• Rough Justice (1898)
• His Darling Sin (1899)
• The Infidel (1900)
• The White House (1906)
• Dead Love Has Chains (1907)
• During Her Majesty's Pleasure (1908)

External links

• Works at the Victorian Women Writers Project