SOURCE: “M. E. Braddon: Sensational Realism,” in Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 92-112.

In the following essay, Gilbert examines the ways in which Braddon molded her public image through her use of various literary genres and tropes.

M. E. Braddon (1835-1915), certainly one of the most prolific authors and editors of the period, is central to any understanding of the Victorian novel. Although she came to the middle-class public's attention with Lady Audley's Secret and Aurora Floyd in 1862, in fact she had been writing for six years. Braddon's production encompasses over seventy novels, many short stories, plays, essays, and the editorship of several journals, most notably Belgravia and The Mistletoe Bough.

Braddon's understanding of the book trade in which and by which she lived is clear-eyed, canny, and comprehensive. Unlike Rhoda Broughton, who had a comfortable social position independent...