Mary Elizabeth Braddon : The Factory Girl (1863)

A new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Factory Girl that includes an introduction that places the novel in its historical and literary contexts, including its connections with Gothic and sensation fiction traditions. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Factory Girl first appeared in serial installments in London’s Halfpenny Journal from January to October 1863. Published anonymously, the novel is an exciting romp through the various tropes of both Gothic and sensation fiction, including poisoning, dueling, kidnapping, secret identities, cross-class love affairs, gambling addictions, and mock marriages. It is one of many nineteenth-century texts that portrayed the “factory girl” as an innocent young woman who was threatened by economic precarity, lecherous suitors, and even her own family. With numerous twists and a large cast of villains, the novel offers a critique of gender and class structures that left women in precarious positions. Sometimes called a “penny blood,” this kind of cheap novel was likely read by factory girls themselves, and this edition, complete with original illustrations, shows why Braddon became the “queen of the circulating library.”