Life
Born in London England, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was five. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years in order to support herself and her mother.
In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell, a publisher of periodicals. She started living with him in 1861. However, Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was living in an asylum in Ireland. Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to 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 (1862), which won her recognition as well as fortune. The novel has been in print ever since its publication, 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 and 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, and is interred 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, now listed. She has a plaque in Richmond parish church which calls her simply 'Miss Braddon'. A number of streets in the area are named after characters in her novels; her husband was a property developer in the area.
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