Mary Braddon

A facsimile volume of Victorian recollections, magazine articles and interviews which considers the reputation and biographical portrayal of this innovative, sometimes controversial writer. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) saw her fourth novel, `Lady Audley’s Secret' (1862), scandalise reviewers and become a bestseller. Her depiction of sexually powerful women corresponded all too neatly with her dubious private life, as the unmarried partner of John Maxwell, a publisher whose wife was incarcerated (like several Braddon heroines) in a lunatic asylum