This early work by Mary Elizabeth Braddon was originally published in
1883 and we are now republishing it with a brand new biography of the
author. 'The Golden Calf' is one of Braddon's novels in the sensation
literature genre. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in Soho, London,
England in 1835. She was educated privately in England and France, and
at the age of just nineteen was offered a commission by a local printer
to produce a serial novel "combining the humour of Dickens with the plot
and construction of G. P. R. Reynolds" What emerged was Three Times
dead, or The Secret of the Heath, which was published five years later
under the title The Trail of the Serpent (1861). For the rest of her
life, Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing more than
eighty novels, while also finding time to write and act in a number of
stage plays.