M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
2 books in the library
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) was an English novelist, born in London. After her parents separated she supported herself and her mother for several years as an actress in provincial theatres, under a stage name, before turning to writing. Her novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was one of the great bestsellers of the century and made her the leading writer of the sensation novel, followed quickly by Aurora Floyd (1863). She lived with the publisher John Maxwell for many years, unable to marry him because his wife was alive in an asylum, and married him in 1874 after the wife’s death; the arrangement drew much gossip. She edited the magazine Belgravia and wrote more than eighty novels, as well as plays, stories and journalism, and her son W. B. Maxwell also became a novelist. She died in Richmond, Surrey, in 1915.
