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Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 - 4 February 1915) was a popular English novelist of the Victorian era. Braddon was a prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with inventive plots. The most famous is Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and a fortune as a bestseller. Braddon founded Belgravia magazine in 1866, which presented readers with serialised sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, along with essays on fashion, history, and science. Born in Soho, London, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry because of his infidelities in 1840, when Mary was five. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years, when she was befriended by Clara and Adelaide Biddle. They were only playing minor roles, but Braddon was able to support herself and her mother. Adelaide noted that Braddon's interest in acting waned as she took up writing novels. Mary met John Maxwell (1824-1895), a publisher of periodicals, in April 1861 and moved in with him in 1861. However, Maxwell was already married to Mary Ann Crowley, with whom he had five children. While Maxwell and Braddon were living as husband and wife, Crowley was living with her family. On 1864, Maxwell tried to legitimize their relationship by telling the newspapers that they were legally married; "however, Richard Brinsley Knowles wrote to these papers, informing them that his sister-in-law and true wife of Maxwell was still living, thereby exposing Braddon's 'wife' status as a façade." Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to get married at St. Bride's Church in Fleet Street. Braddon had six children by him: Gerald, Fanny, Francis, William, Winifred Rosalie, and Edward Herry Harrington.
