. The literary digest. ared only inobscure newspapers. Mrs. Tooley proceeds as follows : A printer at Beverley commissioned the young novelist towrite, for ten pounds, a story which was to combine the humorof Dickens with the plot construction of G. W. M. she been told to combine the qualities of all the masters of fiction put together, .she would probably have set to work to ac-complish the task, being brimful of literary enthusiasm, and per-fectly reckless so long as she succeeded in making a story born of this travail was her first novel, The Trail ofthe Serpent,
. The literary digest. ared only inobscure newspapers. Mrs. Tooley proceeds as follows : A printer at Beverley commissioned the young novelist towrite, for ten pounds, a story which was to combine the humorof Dickens with the plot construction of G. W. M. she been told to combine the qualities of all the masters of fiction put together, .she would probably have set to work to ac-complish the task, being brimful of literary enthusiasm, and per-fectly reckless so long as she succeeded in making a story born of this travail was her first novel, The Trail ofthe Serpent, originally published under the stirring titleThreeTimes Dead. The story was written in some farmhouse lodg-ings at Beverley, Yorkshire, where the budding novelist, accom-panied by her watchful mother, spent several months in rusticquietude, riding about the green lanes on a farm horse, desper-ately weaving plots and drawing characters, and returning hometo fill sheets of foolscap with lightning-like rapidity, while the. SCHKEINER. boy from the Beverley printers waited in the farmhouse kitchenfor the weeks instalment of the story. It was a period of tre-mendous excitement, for the young author had likewise beencommissioned to write a poem in the Spenserian meter, in whichGaribaldi was to be the hero. But Miss Braddon was not meantfor an heroic poet, and she grew to hate the Italian hero and hiswonderful achievements, and loved far better to write prose aboutvillains and fine London houses and ladies with hair like moltengold. Miss Braddon was about twenty-four when she publishedLady Audleys Secret, which made her name as a brilliant success was quickly followed by the equally popu-lar Aurora Floyd and Eleanors Victory and Henry Dunbar.*By the year 1864 her writings had attained ajurore, for, despitesome extravaganza, there was action and drama in the storieswhich held the readers attention to the last page. There wasalways a well-conceived plot and a good su
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1890
