Reading Sensation Critically

Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was the work most§responsible for securing Mary Elizabeth Braddon's§position among the defining sensation novelists of§the Victorian period. Her name continues to remain§inextricably linked with her first best seller. This§study, however, offers a provocative new reading of§Braddon's fiction by focusing on the ways in which§she labored in the 1860s and 1870s to transmute the§sensation genre that initiated her career into a§literary form worthy of critical recognition.§This book offers close readings of seven of§Braddon's novels serialized in Belgravia between 1866§and 1875 that fail to conform to the pattern of§sensation fiction. An analysis of Braddon's fiction,§its critical reception, and letters to her mentor Sir§Edward Bulwer-Lytton, highlight her efforts to escape§the negative associations of the sensation label that§defined her as a writer in the Victorian period and§that often continues to serve as a reductive index of§her fiction.§This study provides scholars and students with a§fuller sense of Braddon as a professional writer who§worked to redefine the sensation genre as both§artistic and instructive.