Mary Elizabeth Braddon was an English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret, which has been dramatised and filmed several times. Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing around 75 novels with very inventive plots. Her legacy is tied to the Sensation Fiction of the 1860s.

Braddon also founded Belgravia Magazine in 1866, which presented readers with serialized sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, and science. Additionally, she edited Temple Bar Magazine. She was the mother of novelist W.B. Maxwell.