Lady Audley's Secret (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140161856 ISBN 13: 9780140161854

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1987

Synopsis

The popular 1860's melodrama about a young girl's all-consuming hatred of her father and stepmother is reprinted with a brief note on the author's life and literary achievements

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was one of the most widely read novels in the Victorian period. The novel exemplifies “sensation fiction” in featuring a beautiful criminal heroine, an amateur detective, blackmail, arson, violence, and plenty of suspenseful action. To its contemporary readers, it also offered the thrill of uncovering blackmail and criminal violence within the homes of the upper class. The novel makes trenchant critiques of Victorian gender roles and social stereotypes, and it creates significant sympathy for the heroine, despite her criminal acts, as she suffers from the injustices of the “marriage market” and rebels against them.

This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a broad selection of primary source material, including reproductions of the twenty-two woodcut illustrations from the London Journal serialization of the novel, extracts from two Victorian dramatizations of the work, satirical commentaries, and contemporary reviews.

About the Author:

Eminent English novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, editor and actress. Braddon wrote more than 70 novels, many of them acclaimed bestsellers, in her life time. Her novels are known for their element of sensationalism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0140161856
• ISBN 13: 9780140161854
• Binding: Paperback