Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915,) married name Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Her Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was the most successful of the sensation novels of the 1860s.
Born in London, Braddon published her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent, in 1861. In the same year appeared Garibaldi and Other Poems, a volume of spirited verse.
Braddon attained fame with a Victorian thriller, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862,) a story of a golden-haired murderess that drew heavily on the case of real-life murderess Constance Kent. A three-volume novel, it told a lurid tale of crime in high society, yet it managed not to transgress the Victorian bounds of propriety. Lady Audley’s Secret has also been dramatized and filmed several times.
Braddon wrote some 75 famous novels, including Aurora Floyd (1863,) John Marchmont’s Legacy (1863,) Dead Men’s Shoes (1876,) Vixen (1879,) Asphodel (1881,) Ishmael (1884,) London Pride (1896,) and The Green Curtain (1911.) Her The Doctor’s Wife (1864) is an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary theme.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
When once estrangement has arisen between those who truly love each other, everything seems to widen the breach.
—Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Topics: Love
Guilt soon learns to lie.
—Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Topics: Guilt, One liners
Exceptional talent does not always win its reward unless favored by exceptional circumstances.
—Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Topics: Luck
Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to love too well?
—Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Topics: Love
There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands.
—Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Topics: Conflict
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
Israel Zangwill English Writer, Political Activist
Gladys Bronwyn Stern British Novelist
Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
Beryl Bainbridge British Novelist
P. D. James British Novelist
Virginia Woolf English Novelist
Ouida (Maria Louise Rame) English Novelist
Agatha Christie British Novelist
Arnold Bennett British Novelist