Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a nineteenth-century theatrical and literary sensation who shocked Victorians with scandals in both her writing and personal life.  Following a daring period as an actress on stages across England, which included performances in Beverley and Hull, she moved to Beverley to launch her writing career.  Her penmanship covers war poetry, detective fiction and the mid-Victorian phenomenon that is ‘sensation fiction’ – novels full of bigamy, kidnap and murder.

Our speaker Dr. Janine Hatter’s research interests centre on nineteenth-century literature, art and culture, with particular emphasis on popular fiction. She has published on Mary Braddon, Bram Stoker, the theatre and identity, short stories as a genre, and Victorian women’s life writing, as well as on her wider research interests of nineteenth to twenty-first century Science Fiction and the Gothic. She is co-editor of two series: New Paths in Victorian Fiction and Culture and Key Popular Women Writers, both for Edward Everett Root Publishers, while she is co-editing a collection on Fashion and Material Culture in Victorian Fiction and Periodicals. Janine is conference co-organiser for the Victorian Popular Fiction Association and has co-founded the Mary Elizabeth Braddon Association.