Lady Audley's Secret (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Susan Balee

Murder, mystery, mistaken identity, madness, bigamy, adultery: These were the special ingredients that made the sensation novel so delectable to the Victorian palate. Readers who devoured Lady Audley's Secret were thrilled and frightened by its inversion of the ideal Victorian heroine. Lady Audley looks like the angel-in-the-house ideal of Victorian womanhood-she is blonde, fragile, and childlike-but her behavior is distinctly villainous. At a time when Victorian women were beginning to rebel against their limited roles as wives and mothers, novels such as Lady Audley's Secret spoke to their secret longings and fantasies.

Genteel women readers, slaving away as governesses in other people's families, could share the fantasy of poor Lucy, suddenly made a lady by her marriage to Sir Michael. Part detective story, part domestic drama, Lady Audley's Secret became a runaway bestseller of its era. Nearly a century and a half since it was first published, Lady Audley's Secret has lost none of its ability to disturb and captivate readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411429642

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) was an English novelist and actress during the Victorian era. Although raised by a single mother, Braddon was educated at private institutions where she honed her creative skills. As a young woman, she worked as a theater actress to support herself and her family. When interest faded, she shifted to writing and produced her most notable work Lady Audley's Secret. It was one of more than 80 novels Braddon wrote of the course of an expansive career.