The Octoroon
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The Octoroon or The Lily of Louisiana is a dark tale of crime, race and slavery. Cora, educated in Britain, returns to her fathers plantation in Louisiana to explore the truth about her mother's slave origins. This book, originally published as a series between 1861 and 1862, was Braddon's second anonymous novel and is now known as a classic anti-slavery novel. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in Soho, London, England in 1835. She had her first serial novel published in 1861 and was an extremely prolific writer for the rest of her life. She produced more than 80 novels as well as several stage plays.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in London in 1837 into the unhappy family of a Cornish solicitor who left when she was five. Her brother Edward left for Tasmania five years later, eventually becoming its prime minister in 1894. Mary helped support herself and her mother by working as an actress and writing fiction. Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was her fourth published novel and first success. It was widely reviled by critics as 'sensation fiction' but made her rich. Seventy more novels followed, many in a similarly racy vein, and remarkable for their inventiveness and readability. She died in 1915.
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