The Octoroon (1861-1862) is a lurid tale of race, slavery and crime. It was the second anonymous novel written by Braddon for the lower class magazine the Halfpenny Journal; A Magazine For All Who Can Read, and was published to coincide with the first British performance of Dion Boucicault's drama of miscegenation in the Southern states of America.

Educated in Britain, Cora only learns the truth about her mother's slave origins, and her own legal position as an Octoroon, when she returns to her father's plantation in Louisiana. Reviving issues raised by Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Braddon also utilised contemporary theatre and her own experience as an actress to create a novel which has much in common with melodramas of the period.

The fact that Braddon wrote The Octoroon has often been remarked upon, many erroneously believing it to be based on Boucicault's play, but few have read her lower class fiction as few copies survive. The Octoroon is virtually unobtainable to the modern reader, as it has never been published in book form in Britain and the American edition omitted one chapter. This unabridged edition has been reprinted from its serialisation in the Halfpenny Journal.

The Octoroon will be of interest to the student and critic of Victorian literature and theatre, and to those interested in anti-slavery novels and the development of popular fiction.

This edition of The Octoroon is limited to 300 copies.

Hardback with an introduction, text of 211pp. and 18 illustrations reproduced from the original serialisation.

ISBN 9781902580043 Price £19.99 ($38)
Free UK postage and Free airmail postage worldwide for this title.

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, The Black Band and One Fatal Moment, 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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