Lady Audleys Secret
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Editor: David Skilton
Oxford University Press | July 1, 1998 | Trade Paperback
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 the time as "high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement." Her crime (the secret of the title) is shown to threaten the apparently respectable middle-class world of Victorian England.