Lady Audley’s Secret: The 1862 Murder Mystery Classic (Annotated)

About Lady Audley’s Secret Lady Audley’s Secret by British author Mary Elizabeth Braddon is a book of literary fiction first published in 1862 in the UK. ‘ That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael’s fate. He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! Destiny! Why, she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his marriage with Alicia’s mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it? What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? ’ What, exactly, is the enigma that surrounds the novel’s lovely heroine? When Robert Audley, the nephew of Sir Michael, Lady Audley’s aristocratic husband, is witness to the frightening effect she has on his friend, George, he sets out to find what lies beneath the surface and uncover secrets hidden in the past. The book shocked readers when it appeared in 1862, and despite harsh criticism, it swiftly elevated Mary Elizabeth Braddon to the upper ranks of Victorian “”sensation”” literature, a distinction she shared only with Wilkie Collins. Lady Audley’s Secret is a compelling, dramatic, and finely crafted novel that explores mid-Victorian concerns about domestic cohesion and the dramatic increase of consumerism, while at the same time examining contemporary ideas regarding gender, class, and insanity. —- ISBN: 9798364351708