Robert Audley should be delighted that his uncle has found such a pretty young bride, even if her past is shrouded in mystery. But when his old friend Talboys, mourning the loss of his wife, is treated oddly by Lady Audley, then goes suddenly and strangely missing, Robert has no choice but to begin [...]
The "Penguin English Library Edition" of "Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. 'Lady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair'. In this outlandish, outrageous triumph of scandal fiction, a new Lady Audley arrives at the [...]
The Doctor's Wife is Mary Elizabeth Braddon's rewriting of Flaubert's Madame Bovary in which she explores her frustrated heroine's sense of entrapment and alienation in middle-class provincial life. This is the only edition of a fascinating work, and reproduces uncut the first edition of 1864.[...]
With Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon had established herself, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood, as one of the ruling triumvirate of 'sensation novelists'. Aurora Floyd (1862-3), following hot on its heels, achieved almost equal popularity and notoriety. Like Lady Audley, Auro[...]
Lady Audley's Secret is, perhaps, the most famous of the Victorian 'sensation' novels. When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley's past is shrouded in mystery, and to Sir Michael's nephew Robert, she is not all th[...]