Mary Elizabeth Braddon Part I

Mary Elizabeth Braddon isn’t well known now, but her books were best sellers in their day. She was one of the early writers of “sensation fiction” like Wilkie Collins. Collins’ books often concentrated on crime and were “detective fiction”. Braddon’s prolific output tended to focus more about the position of women, in society... She wrote of women who ended up in difficulties because under law they were treated differently to men, because they could not earn a living as men could, and because they were blamed and shamed, if they got into unconventional sexual relationships, than there was for men.
Braddon was less radical than Collins, who was inclined to “have a mission” in his books, but she herself had acted in a way that was considered very scandalous… She was the daughter of an actor, who had not been very good at providing for his family. She herself became an actress, and supported her mother and family for a time. In Victorian times, acting was still considered an improper profession for a woman, by most people. It was becoming more acceptable but ladies and middle class women did not go in for it. However it was gradually rising in status, from being “no better than prostitution” and some actresses were “quite respectable” and “ladylike”. They supported themselves by their effort on the stage and didn’t have “admirers” who helped to keep them.
Braddon however gave up the stage and wanted to go into writing. She then met the publisher John Maxwell who gave her a start with publishing her first novels. He was a married man whose wife had mental problems. She was living apart from him and their children because she needed care, and after a time Mary Braddon moved in with Maxwell as his wife. There was talk because some people knew that the first Mrs Maxwell was not dead. However, Braddon continued to be Maxwell’s mistress and stepmother to his family, and she gave birth to several children herself. 
(There is a similar situation in Wllkie Collins’ NO NAME where his heroines’ father had made a bad marriage to an immoral woman, while a very young man. He and his wife lived apart and few knew of the marriage. Later he found a “good” woman who was willing to live with him, as his wife, knowing that she could not legally marry him unless his legal wife died. They had 2 daughters, who were illegitimate, but their situation was not known. He then found that his wife had died abroad and he and the mother of his children were able to marry quietly and regularise the situation. However the foolish man didn’t realise that when he married his lady, and made her his wife, this negated the Will he had made leaving property to his 2 illegitimate daughters, and that he needed to make a new will on marriage).
This real life case and the Novel No Name… shows that under the façade of respectability there were a lot of people in Victorian England who conformed officially to the mores of the time but were secretly behaving in a very scandalous fashion. 
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