SOURCE: “Editing Belgravia: M. E. Braddon's Defense of ‘Light Literature’,” in Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer, 1995, pp. 109-22.

In the following essay, Robinson discusses Braddon's attempts to influence the critical discussion of “light literature” through the publication of her journal Belgravia.

In August 1866, the popular sensation novelist M. E. Braddon wrote to her mentor Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “You will wonder after this—if indeed you honour so insignificant a person with yr wonder—to see my name blazoned anon on hoardings & railway stations in connexion with a new Magazine” (Wolff, “Devoted Disciple” 136). When the first issue of Belgravia: A London Magazine appeared the following November, its title page, like the “hoardings & railway stations,” declared in bold type that it was “Conducted by M. E. Braddon.” By “blazoning” her name in connection with a relatively upscale publication, Braddon hoped to do for her own career what George Augustus Sala...