WB Maxwell’s Vivien

Since we are talking about early twentieth-century British fiction, I want to recommend a novel that I mentioned before but a long time passed and people might have forgotten.

It is titled Vivien, published in 1905. It’s deeply Victorian, so beautiful. You get so many details of life in Victorian England, it’s a treasure.

The author, WB Maxwell, was a son of the very talented bestselling author Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Braddon lived with a married man and had a large number of children with him. In the 1860s. You can imagine what that felt like at the time.

WB Maxwell was 8 when Braddon and his dad finally got officially married. He clearly never got over their irregular living situation, which one can see in Vivien. I tried reading other novels by him but they were horrid. But Vivien is amazing. It has this blend of gritty realism and almost farcical snobbishness that one rarely finds anywhere.