Lady Audley Secret edition by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Sheba Blake Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
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Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The plot was summarised by literary critic Elaine Showalter (1982) "Braddon's bigamous heroine deserts her child, pushes husband number one down a well, thinks about poisoning husband number two and sets fire to a hotel in which her other male acquaintances are residing". Elements of the novel mirror themes of the real-life Constance Kent case of June 1860 which gripped the nation for years. A follow-up novel, Aurora Floyd, appeared in 1863. Braddon set the story in Ingatestone Hall, Essex, inspired by a visit there. There have been three silent film adaptations, one UK television version in 2000, and three minor stage adaptations. Braddon initially sold the rights to the Irish publisher John Maxwell, with whom Braddon also lived and had children. Maxwell published it in his ailing magazine Robin Goodfellow, but Braddon did not labour much, writing the final third in less than two weeks. Not until it was published as a three-volume novel by William Tinsley did it become a success and allow Braddon to be financially independent for the remainder of her life. It also enriched her publisher William Tinsley, who went on to build a villa at Barnes, 'Audley Lodge', with the profits. Notably for the bigamous nature of the plot, Maxwell himself was married to another woman and thus Braddon was unable to marry him until his wife died in 1874. When it became public that Maxwell and Braddon had been living in an "irregular" arrangement all those years, it caused a minor scandal during which all their servants gave notice.
Lady Audley Secret edition by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Sheba Blake Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
Lady Audley's Secret belongs to a genre known as the "sensation" novel. Today, of course, we would be more likely to call it a "thriller," or a "mystery," but that original term is important not only because it belongs to 1860s Victorian literature, but also because it maintains a connection back to the eighteenth century and the novel of sensibility that made made this kind of work possible in the first place. "Sensation" and "sensibility" refer to a novel's ability to provoke emotions in the reader, and certainly Lady Audley's Secret promises to draw us in as readers from the opening pages. Given these influences, Braddon plays self-consciously with the expectations of the nineteenth-century reader for much of the book, drawing especially from the conventions of the Gothic novel in ways that cleverly (and in a more indirect, subtle way than in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey) make fun of this fictional formula. Since most readers today are not familiar with the literature of that era, many of those references will be overlooked or misunderstood. Happily, the plot does not rely on them for advancement.The story itself follows the laconic barrister Robert Audley, whose friend George Talboys has just returned from colonial Australia as a rich man, having found success on the goldfields there. Upon his return, George discovers that the wife he had left behind in England has just died, news that sends him into a deep and lasting depression. When George disappears suddenly, leaving only a note that he has decided to return to Australia, Robert becomes increasingly suspicious that George has in fact been murdered. Robert finds his investigations hampered by his rich uncle's new wife, Lady Audley, a beautiful young woman who seems to have something to hide.
Braddon's narrative is smooth and well-written, and she does a good job of drawing readers into the book's core mystery. But as with any such narrative, the ultimate success of the work depends on the pay-off, and this is where the novel is inevitably going to fall short for the modern reader. The canny reader will quickly work out the most obvious of Lady Audley's secrets, but she does have more than one, and when our detective-protagonist in Robert discovers this deeper truth the novel seems to shrink unimpressively from the spirit of subversion that marked its opening pages. So strong are the moral conventions of the Victorian that Braddon does not dare to challenge them directly. It's not hard to see why - just look at the lashing Thomas Hardy received some thirty years later for the directness of Jude the Obscure - but ultimately it does leave today's reader feeling a bit let down. Braddon's ending does manage to impart some hidden barbs at being forced into this ending, but they are subtle and easy to overlook, and certainly my graduate students did not feel that they rescued the text from disappointment.
Despite this inherent sense of disappointment, I would still highly recommend this book to those who are willing to look past their contemporary expectations and understand this work within its context. It is a very easy and engaging read for a classic work of literature, and while Braddon will not go down as one of the great Victorian writers, this particular work nonetheless does deserve its place as a landmark piece of genre fiction.
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Lady Audley Secret edition by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Sheba Blake Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews
This is a glorious story to immerse oneself! The author's approach of writing about these characters in a straight-forward factual way, gives the reader a chance to piece together the first secret that Lady Audley is keeping and eagerly I read to see what would come from the train collision confrontation that was sure to occur. Yet when it does occur, the author takes us away from that action, leaving us to find out with Robert Audley - the lawyer turned detective - what exactly is going on with Lady Audley and how many crimes did she commit to keep her secret(s). As the reader, I was intrigued by how the author makes it easy to know what is going on in the minds of the characters without actually detailing their thoughts, and I felt like this approach kept up the suspense of wanting to see the other characters realize the truth, which was strung out until almost the end.
In addition to the excellent plot, there are side commentaries on the nature of women, especially their influence over men, and a strange condemnation of women's power which I found so odd because the main impetus for Lady Audley's questionable conduct came from a man. At least I think the fault of men was glossed over repeatedly, and I couldn't tell if the author meant that ironically or not. But it was very thought-provoking to think of how different the lives of many of these characters would have been if the men had made better choices. Not that Lady Audley is without fault.
The writing in this novel is very precise and detailed; with a story that has so many intertwining motivations and agendas, and the author does a great job of revealing all the information at the right time without slowing down the pace. It's a highly entertaining read with characters that are complex and relatable. It's a suspenseful, pseudo-mystery (the reader often knows more than Robert Audley did) but there are still a couple plot twists in the end to make it interesting. I highly recommend this book!
An early mystery story written in a 19thC florid style. The mystery was obvious, but it was interesting, to read of class distinctions and life style of the upper class . The author gives ample time to train schedules, structured times and attire for meals,discussion of mental illness , and how leisure was
viewed. The book ends with all problems solved and evil is justly punished. The events of the story must have been shocking for contemporary readers, but very tame for today's readers.
This story was first published in 1862, that fact alone intrigued me. I love to read these old books from another lifetime. The phrasing, the prose, the way of life in another century, all of it comes vividly to life among the pages. The characters were so well portrayed, the mystery was intricate and not fully concluded until the end of the story. I absolutely loved it.
This is a Victorian novel is all senses of the term -- written a couple of decades into the start of the Victorian era, set in Victorian society, and written for a Victorian audience. It was initially serialized, and each chapter is meant to get the reader to buy the next issue of the magazine. That plus the conventions of the period mean that it's terribly wordy. Perhaps the author was paid by the word, as Dickens was. But it's worth slogging through because it's a very early example of a murder/detective mystery, and you get a pretty clear picture of the social attitudes of the era. It's also unusual in that it's written by a woman, Margaret Braddon. She manages to write it as though she was a man, or at least as though she agreed with the contemporary view of women as having limited capacity. If nothing else, it's a lesson in how far social attitudes have changes and how far good mystery writing has come.
Lady Audley's Secret belongs to a genre known as the "sensation" novel. Today, of course, we would be more likely to call it a "thriller," or a "mystery," but that original term is important not only because it belongs to 1860s Victorian literature, but also because it maintains a connection back to the eighteenth century and the novel of sensibility that made made this kind of work possible in the first place. "Sensation" and "sensibility" refer to a novel's ability to provoke emotions in the reader, and certainly Lady Audley's Secret promises to draw us in as readers from the opening pages. Given these influences, Braddon plays self-consciously with the expectations of the nineteenth-century reader for much of the book, drawing especially from the conventions of the Gothic novel in ways that cleverly (and in a more indirect, subtle way than in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey) make fun of this fictional formula. Since most readers today are not familiar with the literature of that era, many of those references will be overlooked or misunderstood. Happily, the plot does not rely on them for advancement.
The story itself follows the laconic barrister Robert Audley, whose friend George Talboys has just returned from colonial Australia as a rich man, having found success on the goldfields there. Upon his return, George discovers that the wife he had left behind in England has just died, news that sends him into a deep and lasting depression. When George disappears suddenly, leaving only a note that he has decided to return to Australia, Robert becomes increasingly suspicious that George has in fact been murdered. Robert finds his investigations hampered by his rich uncle's new wife, Lady Audley, a beautiful young woman who seems to have something to hide.
Braddon's narrative is smooth and well-written, and she does a good job of drawing readers into the book's core mystery. But as with any such narrative, the ultimate success of the work depends on the pay-off, and this is where the novel is inevitably going to fall short for the modern reader. The canny reader will quickly work out the most obvious of Lady Audley's secrets, but she does have more than one, and when our detective-protagonist in Robert discovers this deeper truth the novel seems to shrink unimpressively from the spirit of subversion that marked its opening pages. So strong are the moral conventions of the Victorian that Braddon does not dare to challenge them directly. It's not hard to see why - just look at the lashing Thomas Hardy received some thirty years later for the directness of Jude the Obscure - but ultimately it does leave today's reader feeling a bit let down. Braddon's ending does manage to impart some hidden barbs at being forced into this ending, but they are subtle and easy to overlook, and certainly my graduate students did not feel that they rescued the text from disappointment.
Despite this inherent sense of disappointment, I would still highly recommend this book to those who are willing to look past their contemporary expectations and understand this work within its context. It is a very easy and engaging read for a classic work of literature, and while Braddon will not go down as one of the great Victorian writers, this particular work nonetheless does deserve its place as a landmark piece of genre fiction.
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