Professional Authorship: M. E. Braddon and Mary

Abstract

DESPITE writing more than eighty novels between 1860 and 1915 in such disparate forms as sensation fiction, Zolaesque naturalistic works, and Balzac inspired novels, Mary Elizabeth Braddon is still best remembered for her earliest forays into fiction, Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and Aurora Floyd (1863). Such was the demand for novels by Braddon that she produced up to three works a year at her most prolific (between 1861 and 1868) and continued to write at least one novel every year until her death in February 1915. She navigated the transition from the three-decker format to single volume novels in 1895 with ease and professionalism, having already prepared three manuscripts for publication in the new format in advance.1 The negotiations for Braddon's final novel, Mary (1916), attest to her enduring popularity as a writer. Her agent A. S. Watt, writing to her eldest son William Babington Maxwell, estimates sales figures in excess of 5,000 copies, pays £200 in ‘advance and on account’ of expected royalties and makes provision for Colonial and 6d editions of the novel.2 The letter, dated 1 June 1916, was written more than a year after Braddon's death and, in referring to the novel Mary, contains the extraordinary lines: I have been in negotiation with Sir George Hutchinson [publisher] about the publication of your mother's last novel,—the one of which the last chapter still remains to be completed,—I take it by you.3