Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in 1837 in London. Her parents separated when she was young, and her brother later moved to Tasmania. Braddon decided to try her hand at fiction in order to support herself and her mother, and wrote her debut novel in 1860. The serial publication of her fourth novel, Lady Audley’s Secret, in 1862, was a huge success. Braddon became wealthy. She lived with the publisher John Maxwell while he was still married to his wife. Though Maxwell publicly claimed they were legally married, he would only marry Mary in 1874 after the death of his first wife. Braddon wrote over eighty novels, and died in 1915.
