Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Factory Girl (1863) was a cheap serial intended for working-class readers. The sprawling plot centres on Laura Leslie and her daughter, Dora, who are the targets of a diverse cast of villains. After Laura’s tragic death, Dora and her adoptive mother start a new life working in a cotton mill, but Dora’s beauty attracts unwelcome attention, putting them in danger. Dora is the classic factory girl, a nineteenth-century revision of the Gothic heroine. Republished in the