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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Mary Braddon

  

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Mary Braddon : [stories]

'In A Young Man's Passage (1950), Mark Tellar recalls "confessing to his prep-school teacher that during the holidays he had read Conway's 'Called Back', together with Fergus Hume's 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' (1887), and stories by Miss M. E. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida."'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Tellar      Print: Unknown

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : novels

"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : unknown

"Mr. Gladstone left aside the cares of state by reading ... [Mary Elizabeth Braddon]."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret

'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : The Doctor's Wife

'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : The Outcasts or Henry Dunbar

?There were no free libraries, so the younger hands joined with me in starting a "Literary Fund" of our own, towards which each paid three-halfpence a week. The papers and books bought for general reading were afterwards divided. In our little club the "Cornhill Magazine", from its start under Thackeray?s editorship, was read and discussed; also Dickens?s successive productions. I call to mind many serious books, as well as "Cassell?s Magazine" and the "London Journal", in which appeared Miss Braddon?s great story of "Henry Dunbar", then entitled "The Outcasts".?

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Printers and compositors at Thomas Catling's place of work, Edward Lloyd's publishing house     Print: Serial / periodical

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : [novels]

'My mother used to read the novels of Miss Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, and those in a series called "The Family Story Teller", that she got from the public library. My father got her "East Lynne" through a pub Literary Society, she read it over and over again. I read it when I was about nine. Heavens, the tears I gulped back over the death of Little Willie!'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret

'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret

'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper      Print: Book

  

Mary Braddon : 

'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Unknown

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Married Beneath Him

'Read a part of a very good novel, "Married beneath him". Heard Harry read & then played a Game of Bezique with Polly'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret

'Strangely, instead of Plato, took up "Lady Audley's Secret" this morning.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : unknown

'It was during all these years that he [Conrad] read. Men at sea read an inordinate amount.[...] A large percentage of the letters received by writers from readers come from sailors either in the King's or the merchant service.[...]. It was Conrad's great good luck to be spared the usual literature that attends on the upringing of the British writer. He read such dog-eared books as are found in the professional quarters of ships' crews. He read Mrs. Henry Wood, Miss Braddon — above all Miss Braddon! — the "Family Herald", rarely even going as high as the late William Black or the pseudoliterary writers of his day.[...] Normally he would express the deepest gratitude to the writers of the "Family Herald" — a compilation of monthly novelettes the grammar of which was very efficiently censored by its sub-editors — and above all to Miss Braddon.[...]. Long after this period of seamanship Conrad read "The Orange Girl", a novel placed in the time of Charles II. He recognised in it, so he then said, all the qualities he had found in this novelist's work when he had been before the mast.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Vixen

'Books read from Feby 16th/18

King Richard II    Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream    do.
Henry the Eighth    do.
As You Like It    do.
Ziska    Marie Corelli
Lorna Doone    R. D. Blackmore
Don Quixote de la mancha Vol II
(Miguel de Cervantes Savedra)
Food of the Gods    H. G. Wells
Odette's Marriage    Albert Delpit
A Walking Gentleman    James Prior
The Making of a Marchioness    F. H. Burnett
Vixen    Mrs. Braddon
The Magnetic North    Eliz. Robins
A Roman Singer    Marion Crawford
In the Reign of Terror    G. A. Henty
Songs of a Sourdough    R. W. Service
Forest Folk    James Prior
John Henry    Hugh McHugh
The Inviolable Sanctuary    G. A. Birmingham'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Henry Jones      Print: Book

  

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