ABSTRACT
Mary Elizabeth Braddon fought for greater control over her professional identity and her profits, with the help of her publisher and future husband John Maxwell. But even before taking direct action to maintain control of her publications, she entered the overwrought transatlantic publishing debate by pairing the subjects of slavery and transatlantic exchange in The Octoroon; Or the Lily of Louisiana. The Octoroon follows the fate of Cora Leslie, whose father the owner of a plantation in Louisiana sends her to England to be educated at the age of five. Carnell maintains that Braddon's Octoroon has more in common with Uncle Tom's Cabin and its stage productions which Braddon had certainly seen and possibly performed in during the 1850sand Thomas Morton's play The Slave, in which Braddon played the quadroon heroine.
