Miss M. E. Braddon

Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910)

1881

Wood engraving

Punch (5 March 1881): 106

“Punch’s Fancy Portraits.— No. 21”

“Just as I am!”

In Sambourne’s caricature the novelist holds a mask of sensation rather than one of tragedy or comedy while an inkwell in the form of a skull sits on a table. Below we see Asphodel, a novel Mrs Maxwell (as Braddon became) published in 1881, and “MUD...IE” for Muddie’s Circulating Library, the mainstay of the triple decker novel. The name might appear like this as a joke.

Image capture and text by George P. Landow.

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