Best known work

• Lady Audley's Secret, 1862

Other well known work(s)

• Aurora Floyd, 1863

Genres

• Fiction - Novels
• Fiction - Short Stories
• Poetry
• Journalism

Nom de plume

Mary Seyton, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell

Social class

Middle class

Parental background

Braddon's father was a solicitor, her mother a journalist. Braddon was educated at a private school.

At publication of best known work

• Age: 27
• Marital status: Unmarried (cohabiting with John Maxwell)
• Number of children: 2

Physical description

The following description appeared in an obituary in the Evening Telegraph: "In appearance Miss Braddon was a stately, dignified woman, with a strong, calm, rather massive face, bright grey eyes, and luxuriant hair" (Feb 5, 1915). The Georgia Weekly Telegraph was rather less flattering in 1875 describing her as : "a tall, rather angular woman, evidently upon the shady side of forty, with hair cut short and streaked with gray, with coarse lines about her mouth, and a deep furrow between her eyes. She dresses tolerably well, not elaborately or with a blind obedience to the latest mandates of fashion, but with evident indifference to cost, if also with a sense obtuse to the more subtle gradations of harmony in color. She is a person whom one might imagine to be the principal of a girl's school, or the spinster aunt of a large family of obstreperous boys and nagging girls, and thus account for the stern lines of her face, which seem not so much that of a dominant or a conquered sorrow as of repressed passion" (Jan 5, 1875). Said to be rather inclined towards stoutness (see description of Mrs Henry Wood).

Did you know?

Braddon and her mother moved in with John Maxwell (Braddon's publisher) in 1861. Maxwell was married with five children but his wife was confined to a mental institution. Braddon and Maxwell could not marry until 1874 (when his wife died), by which time they already had five children of their own.

Additional information

A comprehensive website to Braddon's life and works can be found at http://maryelizabethbraddon.com. Other sites of interest are Jennifer Carnell's and the Victorian Web.