Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part V:
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and William Thackeray by their contemporaries
Series Editor: Ralph Pite
Volume Editors: William Baker, Judith L Fisher, Andrew Gasson, and Andrew Maunder
Lives of Victorian Literary Figures
978 1 85196 819 0: 234x156mm: £275.00/$495.00
The fifth set of facsimile volumes in this well-regarded series considers the reputations and biographical portrayal of three innovative, sometimes controversial writers.
All three had complex private lives which were reflected in their works. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) saw her fourth novel, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), scandalise reviewers and become a bestseller. Her depiction of sexually powerful women corresponded all too neatly with her dubious private life, as the unmarried partner of John Maxwell, a publisher whose wife was incarcerated (like several Braddon heroines) in a lunatic asylum. Wilkie Collins’s writing (1824–89) had many similarities to Braddon’s. His skills in plot construction were unsurpassed by any writer of the period. Like Braddon, Collins’s personal life attracted speculation, as if someone so adept at portraying moral degeneracy must be a little degenerate himself. William Thackeray (1811–63) began his career, as Braddon and Collins did, by revealing criminal inclinations within respectable society. He was a satirist, first in journals like Punch; later in novels. He too had a wife incarcerated as a lunatic and his public persona was closely associated with his work.
Like other volumes in the series these anthologies of contemporary biographical material shed light on the processes at work in the establishment of a public image and a critical reputation. In particular, with this selection of writers, they reveal a process of disguise – the masks and evasions that these novelists who were instinctively rebellious employed to preserve their respectability.
- Each facsimile page is digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original
- Full editorial apparatus includes a substantial general introduction, introductions to each volume, bibliographies, chronologies, headnotes, endnotes and a general index in the final volume
Contents
Volume 1: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
General Introduction; Volume Introduction; Anon., ‘Mrs Wood and Miss Braddon’, Littell’s Living Age (1863); Anon, ‘Miss Braddon’, New Review (1863); [W. Fraser Rae], ‘Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon’, North British Review (1865); [Unsigned Review], Margaret Oliphant, ‘Novels’, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine (1867); Anon., ‘Miss Babbington White’, London Review (1867); Anon., ‘Miss Braddon’s Novels’, Dublin University Magazine (1870); Anon., ‘John Gilbey’, Beverley Recorder (1884); Anon., ‘Metropolitan on Dits’, Court Journal (1864); R B Knowles, ‘Miss Braddon the Novelist and Mr Maxwell’, Public Opinion (1864); W P Frith, ‘Mary Elizabeth Maxwell’ (1865); Anon., ‘The Mask’s Album. No. IV.–Miss Braddon’, Mask (1868); R B Knowles, Mary Anne Maxwell (1874); Anon., ‘Miss Braddon in Trouble’ New York Times (1874); Edmund Yates, Celebrities at Home (1877); Anon., ‘Miss Braddon’, New York Times (1878); Anon., 'Just as I am', Punch (1881); W P Frith, ‘The Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881’ (1883); Edmund Yates, Fifty Years of London Life (1885); C L Reade and the Rev Compton Reade Charles Reade, A Memoir (1887); Percy Fitzgerald, Memoirs of an Author (1894); G A Sala, Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala Written by Himself (1895); Arnold Bennett, ‘Miss Braddon: An Inquiry’, Academy (1899); W P Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1888); Joseph Hatton, ‘Miss Braddon at Home: A Sketch and an Interview’, London Society (1888); Anon., ‘Men and Women of the Time: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’, Melia’s Magazine (1888); George Gissing, New Grub Street (1891); T H S Escott, Platform, Press and Politics at Play (1895); Anon., ‘Death of Mr John Maxwell’ Richmond and Twickenham Times (1895); Mary Dickens, ‘Miss Braddon at Home’, Windsor Magazine (1897); Anon, ‘Some Authors and their Homes: Miss Braddon’, Literary World (1899); William Tinsley, Random Recollections of an Old Publisher (1900); Harry Sutherland Edwards, Personal Recollections (1900); Harriet Jay, Robert Buchanan (1903); Isabelle Fyvie Mayo, Recollections of what I Saw, what I Lived Through and what I Learned, During More than Fifty Years of Social and Literary Experience (1910); Mrs Charles [Adelaide] Calvert, Sixty-Eight Years on the Stage (1911); Clive Holland, ‘Fifty Years of Novel Writing: Miss Braddon at Home’ Pall Mall Magazine (1911); Anon., ‘Miss Braddon at Home’, Daily Telegraph (1913); Anon, ‘Miss Braddon’s 75th Birthday’, Pall Mall Gazette (1913); Yoshio Markino, ‘Miss Braddon’, from, Douglas Sladen, Twenty Years of my Life (1915); Anon., ‘Death of Miss Braddon. A Typical English Novelist’ (1915); Anon, ‘The Late Miss Braddon: Funeral at Richmond’, Thames Valley Times (1915); Anon., ‘Death of Miss Braddon’, Pall Mall Gazette (1915); Anon., ‘Death of Miss Braddon. A Famous Novelist', Yorkshire Post (1915); Anon., ‘Death of Miss Braddon. Great Victorian Novelist: Tributes by Novelists of To-day.’, Daily Mail (1915); Anon., ‘The Late Miss Braddon’, Sydney Morning Herald (1915); Anon, ‘Death of Miss Braddon’ Daily Mirror (1915); Anon, ‘Death of Miss Braddon. Famous Novelist Dies at Richmond’, Richmond Herald (1915); Anon, ‘The Late Miss Braddon’, Queen (1915); 'Jacob Omninum', ‘Under Cover’, The Bookseller (1915); Mathilda Beetham Edwards, Mid-Victorian Memories (1919); Squire Bancroft, Empty Chairs (1925); Ford Madox Ford, It Was the Nightingale (1933); [Mrs Desmond Humphreys], ‘Rita’, Recollections of a Literary Life (1936); W B Maxwell, Time Gathered (1937); Harry Furniss, Some Victorian Women: Good, Bad and Indifferent (1923); W B Maxwell, Time Gathered (1937); D Sladen, My Long Life (1939); Anon., ‘Wanted: People Who Knew Mary Elizabeth Braddon’, Richmond and Twickenham Times (1956); Editorial Notes
Volume 2: Wilkie Collins
Volume Introduction; George Makepeace Towle, ‘Wilkie Collins’ , Appleton’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art (1870); James Payn, Some Literary Recollections (1885); ‘A Novelist on Novel-writing: an interview with Wilkie Collins’, Cassell’s Saturday Journal (1887); [Bernard H Becker], ‘Celebrities At Home. No. LXXI. Mr. Wilkie Collins in Gloucester-Place’, The World (1877); Wilkie Collins, ‘Reminiscences of a Story-Teller’, Universal Review (1888); A C Swinburne, [Wilkie Collins], Fortnightly Review (1889); [Meredith White Townsend],'[Wilkie Collins', Spectator (1889); Hall Caine, ‘Wilkie Collins. Personal Recollections’, The Globe (1889); Edmund Yates, ‘Moi-Meme. In Memoriam W W C, Obit September 23rd 1889’, The World (1889); Andrew Lang, ‘Mr Wilkie Collins’s Novels’, Contemporary Review (1890); Etheldine (Linda) Gardiner, [Wilkie Collins], Temple Bar (1890); Horace Pym, ‘On Wilkie Collins’, A Tour Round My Bookshelves (1891); Harry Quilter, ‘In Memoriam Amici: Wilkie Collins’, Preference in Art, Life and Literature (1892); [Nathaniel Beard], ‘Some Recollections of Yesterday’, Temple Bar (1894); Mary Anderson, A Few Memories (1896); William Tinsley, Random Recollections (1900); Arthur Waugh, ‘Wilkie Collins and His Mantle’, Academy Magazine (1902); Edmund Downey, ‘A Peep at the Author of “The Woman in White.”’, Twenty Years Ago (1905); Lewis Melville, ‘Wilkie Collins’, Victorian Novelists (1906); Wybert Reeve, ‘Recollections of Wilkie Collins’, Chamber’s Journal (1906); William Winter, ‘Wilkie Collins’, Old Friends (1909); Marie and Squire Bancroft, The Bancrofts: Recollections of Sixty Years (1909); Arthur Compton-Rickett, ‘Wilkie Collins’, The Bookman (1912); Frank Archer, An Actor’s Notebooks (1912); Lucy Bertha C Walford, Memories of Victorian London (1912); Editorial Notes
Volume 3: William Thackeray
Volume Introduction; John Frederick Boyes, ‘A Memorial of Thackeray’s School Days’, The Cornhill Magazine (1865); Gerald S Davies, ‘Thackeray as Carthusian’, Grey-Friar (1890–95); Richard Bedingfield, ‘Personal Recollections of Thackeray. By his Cousin’, Cassell’s Magazine (1870); Charles and Frances Brookfield, Mrs Brookfield and Her Circle (1906); Jane Brookfield, A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, 1847–55 (1887); S B T Mayer, Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Richard Hengist Horne (1877); James T Fields, ‘Thackeray’, Yesterday with Authors (1925); George Hodder, Memories of my Time including Personal Reminiscences of Eminent Men (1870); Frederick Locker-Lampson, ‘Thackeray’, My Confidences (1896); Henry Vizetelly, Glances Back Through Seventy Years (1893); ‘D D’, ‘Some Few Thackerayana’, The National Review (1889); John Brown and Henry Lancaster, ‘Thackeray’, North British Review (1864); Jane Townley Pryme and Alicia Bayne, ‘Thackeray’, from Memorials of the Thackeray Family (1879); Samuel Bevan, Sand and Canvas: A Narrative of Adventures in Egypt, with a Sojourn Among the Artists in Rome (1849); Lewis Melville, ‘Thackeray as Artist. Concerning Thackeray’s Drawings’, Connoisseur (1904); Anne Thackeray Ritchie, ‘The First Number of "The Cornhill"’, The Cornhill Magazine (1896); Anne Thackeray Ritchie, ‘The First Editor and the Founder’ The Cornhill Magazine (1910); George M Smith, ‘Our Birth and Parentage’, The Cornhill Magazine (1901); Lucy Baxter, ‘Introduction’, Thackeray’s Letters to an American Family (1904); James Grant Wilson, Thackeray in the United States (1904); Editorial Notes