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With an Introduction and Notes by Esther Saxey The flaxen-haired beauty of the childlike Lady Audley would suggest that she has no secrets. But M.E. Braddon’s classic novel of sensation uncovers the truth about its heroine in a plot involving bigamy, arson and murder. It challenges... Read Full Overview

First published serially in 1861, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "Lady Audley's Secret" is the wildly successful Victorian-era sensation novel. Sensation novels were very popular in English literature in the 1860s and 1870s. The novels were a combination of realism and romance and... Read Full Overview

"The most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels", according to the famous literary critic John Sutherland.Wealthy estate owner sir Michael Audley willingly marries a gold-digger, his only daughter Alicia's governess Lucy nee Gray. Sir Michael's dashing, in-living... Read Full Overview

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'

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in London on 4th October 1835.

Braddon suffered early family trauma at age five, when her mother, Fanny, separated from her father, Henry, in 1840. When she was aged ten her brother Edward left England for India and later Australia.

However,... Read Full Overview

Originally published in Robin Goodfellow magazine, Lady Audley's Secret is the essential work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and is considered a staple of sensation fiction. The story centers on a mysterious woman, whose dark past slowly comes to light.

This Victorian bestseller, along with Braddon's other famous novel, Aurora Floyd, established her as the main rival of the master of the sensational novel, Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of... Read Full Overview

As Sir Michael Audley celebrates his marriage to Lucy Graham, his nephew, the barrister Robert Audley, welcomes his old friend George Talboys back to England, after three years of gold prospecting in Australia. George finds out that his wife Helen has died and that his son is... Read Full Overview

Barrister Robert Audley is suspicious. His friend George Talboys recently returned a rich man from the goldfields of colonial Australia but is shattered to find that the wife he left behind has died. Now George has vanished, leaving only a note saying that he's returned to Australia... Read Full Overview

This Squid Ink Classic includes the full text of the work plus MLA style citations for scholarly secondary sources, peer-reviewed journal articles and critical essays for when your teacher requires extra resources in MLA format for your research paper.

Lady Audley is universally adored: beautiful, kind and charming, she enamours all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behaviour takes an odd turn. George's friend Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the... Read Full Overview

'Women are never lazy. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharine the Seconds . . . To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the nosier, the more... Read Full Overview