In recent years the reputation of Mary Elizabeth Braddon has been restored to some of the prominence she enjoyed for six decades. In the 1860s she was one of the most successful and controversial novelists of her generation, rated alongside Wilkie Collins as the inventor of the sensation genre.

At the time she wrote her most famous novels, Braddon also wrote a number of anonymous serials for lower class serials. The most famous of these is The Black Band (1861-1862), and this enormous novel, aimed at the poorest readers, offers obvious parallels with her middle class fiction. As with sensation fiction, it contains an astonishing amount of crime, detection, secret societies, murderous women, and an undercurrent of secrets hidden by respectability. The Black Band gives the reader a portrayal of decadent upper class life, intertwined with worthy working class characters. Set in London and Italy, the novel shows a society at risk from foreign political societies, principally the Black Band led by the villainous Colonel Oscar Bertrand, financing its activities through international robbery. In one of her heroines, Lady Edith Vandeleur, Braddon created a woman to rival Lady Audley in her single-minded and criminal pursuit of her desires.

The fact that Braddon wrote this anonymous work has often been remarked upon, but few have read her lower class fiction, partly because few copies have survived. This edition is the first ever unabridged edition, taken from the magazine the Halfpenny Journal.

The Black Band is limited to 160 copies.
(Originally a print run of 500 copies was planned, but this was reduced to 160)

Hardback, with a 25pp. introduction, 605pp. of text, 6pp. of notes and 44 illustrations reproduced from the serialisation.

ISBN 1 902580 00 1

The Black Band is now out of print

Jennifer Carnell received her Ph.D for her research on Braddon from the University of London in 1999 and wrote The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (2000) for The Sensation Press. She has edited editions of two books for the Sensation Press, One Fatal Moment and The Octoroon, is a contributor to the book Beyond Sensation (State University of New York Press), and is the author of a novel (Harper Collins).

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