M. E. Braddon, Bohemian Networks and the Shaping of a Sensational Author

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the recurring association of the sensation genre, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon in particular, with Bohemianism. It reads Braddon as Bohemian on a contextual level by tracing the web of relationships that linked Braddon with a number of different literary men as she began her writing career in the early 1860s. It then turns to Braddon’s fiction itself, analysing its response to Bohemian characters and scenes in early texts such as The Trail of the Serpent (1860–61) and Eleanor’s Victory (1863) while also exploring the conceptual connections between the terms “sensationalism” and “Bohemianism”. The article’s final section considers Braddon’s ambiguous response to Bohemian authorship in her Belgravia novels Birds of Prey (1866–67), Dead-Sea Fruit (1867–68) and Charlotte’s Inheritance (1868–69). In these late 1860s works, Braddon distances herself from the literary Bohemians who helped shape her career in the early 1860s, and in so doing provides commentary on the shifting, gendered dynamics of authorship in the mid-Victorian period.