Conclusion

Abstract

In an 1888 contribution to the Lady’s Pictorial, Florence Fenwick Miller deplored the social system that made women writers and artists relinquish at marriage the name under which they had first achieved success and established their reputation. In the eyes of the law, Mary Elizabeth Braddon became Mrs Maxwell when she finally married publisher John Maxwell in 1874, Adelaide Claxton became Mrs Turner, and Mary Ellen Edwards consecutively adopted the names of two husbands, Freer and Staples. As Fenwick Miller observed, the system forced women to reclaim their maiden name as a pseudonym or nom de plume in order to ensure the continuity of their careers: ‘[I]n all professions where the personality of the worker is of importance women have already learned, and have shown that they have learned, that the name cannot by lightly thrown away. The result is the practice of using an alias.’¹ Claxton and Edwards continued to sign their work ‘AC’ and ‘MEE’ respectively, and when the Daily News announced the death of Mrs Francis Lean in 1899, the newspaper hastened to add that she was ‘better known to the public as Florence Marryat’.²