SENSATION FICTION

Part 1: Diaries, Notebooks and Literary Manuscripts of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin

Part 1 of Sensation Fiction makes available the papers of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who was one of the most successful and controversial writers of her generation, rated alongside Wilkie Collins as the inventor of the sensation genre. It includes:

• Seven substantial volumes of notes which Braddon used as a quarry for her writing. These include discussions of the philosophy of Plato, Kant and Nietzsche; extracts from writers that she admired from Horace and Shakespeare to Flaubert and Heine; plot summaries, book titles and some stories and plays; and notes on miscellaneous topics from African explorers and the colloquial Hindostani, to accounts of Florence and Venice.  
• 25 volumes of diaries covering the period from 1890 to 1914.
• Letters to and from friends and acquaintances, including J M Barrie, Herbert Beerbohm-Tree, Walter Besant, Rhoda Broughton, Hall Caine, William Powell Frith, Thomas Hardy, Henry Irving, Henry James, Arthur Wing Pinero, Charles Reade, Anne Ritchie and Charles Wyndham. 
• Literary manuscripts including examples of novels, short stories and plays for the full range of her career.  Sketchbooks, photographs and illustrations for Braddon’s novels.