To misquote from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Mary Elizabeth Braddon is recognised as the author of a great number of novels and short stories generally labelled under the name of ‘sensation’. But for those who do not like stereotypes, it is a far more relevant truth that she was something more than a talented plot maker, the creator of immoral intrigues, a peculiar anti-conformist and a sharp witness of her times. Braddon was, first of all, a self-conscious novelist always dissatisfied with the final result of her works and eager to learn from ‘eminent Victorians’ such as Edward Bulwer Lytton, her literary mentor. In a letter in which she deals with Aurora Floyd, Braddon admits:

In this letter Braddon confesses to having lost her battle to limit herself to serious writing, a battle which had George Eliot among its most strenuous advocates. In ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ (1856), Eliot stated that ‘the most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more solid education of women’, concluding her article on the necessity for women to have ‘patient diligence, a sense of responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer’s art’.