Phantom Fortune

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in London on 4th October 1835. Braddon suffered early family trauma at age five, when her mother, Fanny, separated from her father, Henry, in 1840. When she was aged ten her brother Edward left England for India and later Australia. However, after being befriended by Clara and Adelaide Biddle she was much taken by acting. For three years she took minor acting roles, which supported both her and her mother, However, her interest in acting began to wane as she began to write. It was to be her true vocation. In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell, a publisher of periodicals. By the next year they were living together. The situation and the view from polite society was complicated by the fact that Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was under care in an Irish asylum. Until 1874 Mary was to act as stepmother to his children as well as to the six offspring their own relationship produced. Braddon, with a large and growing family, still found time to produce a long and prolific writing career. Her most famous book was a sensational novel published in 1862, ‘Lady Audley's Secret’. It won her both recognition and best-seller status. Her works in the supernatural genre were equally prolific and brought new menace to the form. Her pact with the devil story ‘Gerald, or the World, the Flesh and the Devil’ (1891), and the ghost stories ‘The Cold Embrace’, ‘The Face in the Glass’ and ‘At Chrighton Abbey’ are regarded as classics. In 1866 she founded the Belgravia magazine. This presented readers with serialised sensation novels, poems, travel narratives and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history and science. The magazine was accompanied by lavish illustrations and offered readers an excellent source of literature at an affordable cost. She was also the editor of The Temple Bar magazine. Maxwell’s wife died in 1874 and the couple who had been together for so long were at last able to wed. Mary Elizabeth Brandon died on 4th February 1915 in Richmond and is buried in Richmond Cemetery. After her death her short story masterpieces would be regularly anthologised. But for the rest of her canon her reputation then went into decline. In the past decade her reputation and talent is once more being given the attention it so rightly deserves.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, British Literature

492 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1883

About the author

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Braddon also founded Belgravia Magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialized sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, science. She also edited Temple Bar Magazine. Braddon's legacy is tied to the Sensation Fiction of the 1860s.

She is also the mother of novelist W.B. Maxwell.

Reviews

[Mbuye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether you like or despise Mary Elizabeth Braddon's work, her great success lay in the telling of a story. Her work may be derivative (Wilkie Collins leaps to mind) melodramatic, character driven, cliché-ridden, but however weak the plot, however many coincidences are introduced as an alternative to a rational resolution, the writing, so commonplace, is absolutely rivetting. Her natural heir in the twentieth century is possibly Daphne du Maurier, though the later writer is superior in style and language as well as in sheer creativity.

In 'Phantom Fortune' – an absurd mix of Wilkie Collins's 'Moonstone' and Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair', both with a hint of an Indian background, with a dash of Dickens for flavour – Braddon ratchets up the tension with increasing ferocity, but the story falls to pieces when the legitimate heir to an Indian kingdom dies in an accident. After that, the plot turns in a different direction altogether, and becomes a morality play. The only real villain of the piece is eliminated in the first chapter, so the rest is a study of vanity, pride and hubris. The attraction in this novel is the characterisation, with four very strong women, three of whom are driven by pride, ambition or greed. The male characters are all of them but one thoroughly unpleasant. The apparently weakest among them turns out the strongest. And of course, the Hero is godlike.

What is fascinating is the description of the Lake District, the setting for the first part of the story. While it does not form an intrinsic element of the plot, the moods and views of the lakes and becks and hills are all that a neo-Romanticist could wish for. Also entertaining are Braddon's throwaway lines on Wordsworth, Mrs Oliphant, Zola and the Impressionists.

Altogether, 'Phantom Fortune' grips your attention from its first page and explains Braddon's popularity in her time and today, when her style of silver spoon fiction is utterly out of fashion.

[Liz M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Braddon is my current fixation based on how varied and outright weird her novels are, and what they say about the anxieties of late Victorian gentry. An amazing set up that like most of Braddon's novels, grows weaker toward the end. Some nice characterization in the proud, ambitious, and self defeating Lady Maulevrier and her vacillating favorite granddaughter, Lesbia. A great disdain for stockbrokers that somehow is never shown for bankers at a time when banks were not secure. Braddon appears to get caught up in the sentimental and edifying towards the end of the novel to the detriment of the sensational, dropping an enticing subplot about the son of a murdered Raja along the way.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the love stories of two sisters and their grandmother, and how all three stories are intertwined. Two aspects I love about Braddon’s writing: we get to follow her characters through several different phases of their lives, and she lets us guess many of the story’s secrets early on, but always delights us with how those secrets slowly become unveiled to the characters. The younger sister, Mary or Molly, is one of my favorite characters in all her works that I have read so far. She loves to be active outdoors, is respectfully independent, forgiving, sweet, and loyal. First published in 1883. I listened to this novel as a free audio download from LibriVox.org.

[Mike Thelwall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a well-written story with multiple overlapping plots, keeping my attention to the end. The shocking decadence of "the season" in London (is that what they got up to???) and double standards of the upper classes seem to be a deliberate theme through the book. It is a bit let down by one-dimensional characters, although Lesbia evolves. There are shocking uses of the j-word (as a racist insult) an n-word and racism in the book, although it also has a positive brief Indian character.

[Genie Cram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her best but pretty fun

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprise I never saw coming and captivating characters! I absolutely loved this one of Braddon's.

[Geicodave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engrossing Victorian novel

This is a novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a popular novelist in the mid to late nineteenth century. It was first published in 1883. She was known for her "sensation novels," the most famous of which, "Lady Audley's Secret," is still read today. Most of her other novels (there are dozens of them) have been forgotten today, although several are still in print. This is not one of her better efforts, but I found it engrossing and would recommend it to those who enjoy Victorian fiction. The novel has " sensational" elements in it but I don't believe it is a true "sensation novel."

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly entertaining Victorian pulp novel. Not as well crafted as some of ME Braddon's other works but enjoyable nonetheless.