BRADDON, MARY ELIZABETH

married name Mary Elizabeth Maxwell born Oct. 4, 1837, London, Eng. died Feb. 4, 1915, Richmond, Surrey English novelist whose Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was a sensational and financial success. The daughter of a solicitor in Cornwall and the sister of a prime minister of Tasmania, Braddon received a private education. She produced her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent, in 1861. In the same year appeared Garibaldi and Other Poems, a volume of spirited verse. In 1862 her reputation as a novelist was made by the success of Lady Audley's Secret. A three-volume novel, written at the request of John Maxwell (a publisher whom she subsequently married), it told a lurid story of crime in high society that yet managed not to transgress the Victorian bounds of propriety. Braddon published more than 70 novels, in many of which she demonstrated a skill for social satire and the ability to create appropriate atmosphere. Among them are John Marchmont's Legacy (1863), Dead Men's Shoes (1876), Vixen (1879), Asphodel (1881), London Pride (1896), and The Green Curtain (1911). Her sons W.B. Maxwell and Gerald Maxwell also became novelists.