W. B. Maxwell

Biography

William Babington Maxwell was born on June 4, 1866, to Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a popular novelist, and John Maxwell, her publisher (they married after W. B. Maxwell’s birth, in 1874). From a young age, Maxwell was exposed to British literati, including numerous well-known writers of the nineteenth century. Through his mother's literary circle, he was introduced to Robert Browning, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Oscar Wilde, among others. Indeed, Oscar Wilde became Maxwell’s literary idol: Maxwell admired Wilde’s wit, charm, and departure from his public reputation while around the Maxwell family. Despite being surrounded by the greatest British and American writers of his lifetime, the writer who most greatly influenced the young W. B. Maxwell was his mother, Miss Braddon. Vivacious, loving, and immensely talented, Braddon encouraged her son to pursue his creative faculties. Though first attracted to the idea of becoming an artist, Maxwell later abandoned art school, at which point his mother suggested writing. After publishing his second novel, Vivien, as well as a variety of short stories through periodicals, Maxwell discovered the same deep enjoyment in writing held by his mother. For the rest of his life, Maxwell would attribute the prolific nature of his writing to encouragement from his mother, and the overwhelming respect and adoration he had for her.

In 1906, Maxwell married Sydney Brabazon Moore, and they had two children: Barbara and Henry. Maxwell’s autobiography relates a happy and loving marriage.  One may attribute the theme of marriage, loyalty, and love found in many of Maxwell’s short stories to his real-life marriage. This is strongly evidenced in his short story, "The Longest Day of Her Life." Because he was born into affluence and maintained his financial success through the publication of his own writing, Maxwell was afforded the opportunity to travel, as well as the ability to live both in the country and the city. Though inspired by locations in America and Europe, Maxwell derived most of his inspiration from his homeland. Many of his stories feature the rural countryside of England, where he grew up, as well as the gritty East End and London vistas he resided in for the latter half of his life. This subtle devotion towards, and awe for, his home contributed to his reaction to the start of WWI. Though nearly fifty years old, he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and was deployed in France until 1917. Maxwell was shaken by his experiences in the war; the beginnings of his modernist thinking stemmed from the reality of the horrors of humanity he had witnessed, and the realization that victory came only at great cost. In his personal journal he noted, “The more I try to think of materials or ideas unconnected with the War, the less easy it becomes. The War not only dominates all one’s thoughts, it prevents one from making any scheme of life for the after-war period . . . all things normal have ceased to be, and therefore there is no basis left for normal thought”. This disillusionment and loss of stabilization would further help to introduce the thematic elements of his later works. Largely forgotten in modernism studies today, W. B. Maxwell was a prolific writer who experienced moderately significant success during his lifetime, a man transitioning from the world of realism and stability to an era of modernism and doubt.