In 1868, she married an Italian count twenty years her senior, Efisio Quigini Puliga (1827-1876), adviser to the Italian
Legation in Paris, who died in 1876 following a long illness. To provide for the education of her two young children, she began to write chronicles and short stories under the
pseudonym "Bradamente", later abbreviated to "Brada", which were published in the
Journal des débats,
Le Figaro, the
Revue de Paris as well as in several other periodicals such as
La Vie parisienne and ''
L'Illustration'' where she used the pseudonym, "Mosca". Her novels and short stories, which soon appeared in bookstores, met with great success and received awards from the Académie Française with the
Montyon Prize in 1890, the Jouy Prize in 1895, and the Xavier Marmier Prize in 1934. She thus continued to write until at the age of over 80, leading a simple life in Paris interspersed with stays in Italy. The success of her novels was due in part to the aristocratic circles that she had participated in, first while in Paris and
London, where she had lived with her father, then in
Berlin, where she had followed her husband in his diplomatic career. They were largely based on "cosmopolitan high-society intrigues" depicting "supremely aristocratic passions and vices". Often compared to
Gyp, Brada was appreciated by her contemporary readers for her "spontaneity and freshness" as well as for her "elegance and distinction". She dabbled in different genres. Her first book,
Madame de Sévigné: Her Correspondents and Contemporaries, written in English and published in London in 1873, was a study of the correspondents and contemporaries of
Madame de Sévigné. Brada's remarks on the decline of the aristocracy and the emancipation of women, which appeared in her
Notes sur Londres (Notes on London) in 1895, caught the attention of
Henry James. In later life, she published two memories, one in English, the other in French. In the first, published in 1899 under the title
My Father and I, she evoked her early childhood as well as her first steps in British high society in the company of her father, to whom she felt bound by a great complicity. In the second, entitled ''Souvenirs d'une petite Second Empire'' and published in 1921, she recounted her memories of boarding school and, among many other anecdotes, the visits she made to
Ewelina Hańska,
Balzac's widow. ==Death==