A popular novel from a leading light of Victorian sensation fiction, drawing on contemporary theories of insanity to probe mid-Victorian anxiety. What is the mystery surrounding the artful and charming Lady Audley? Robert Audley, aristocrat turned detective, investigates.

Lady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair. In this fiction, a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young, beautiful - and very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What, exactly, is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her?

When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley's past is shrouded in mystery, and Sir Michael's nephew Robert has vague forebodings. When Robert's good friend George Talboys suddenly disappears, he is determined to find him, and to unearth the truth. His quest reveals a tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue, whose sensational twists turn the conventional picture of Victorian womanhood on its head. Can Robert's darkest suspicions really be true? A publishing sensation in its day, Lady Audley's...

Lady Audley's Secret, the play based on Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sensation novel of the same name, is presented in a stand-alone volume with introductory and contextual materials closely based on those found in the online component of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature.

" I]t belongs with her very best novels ... marks a new departure in its bold and delicate exploration of human psychology and in its economy of style." - Robert Lee Wolff
Pregnant and unmarried, seventeen-year-old Irene Thelliston has been sent home from India in disgrace to live with her aunt in rural Ireland. Only one person knows her secret: Lady Mary Harling, a fellow passenger on her sea voyage, who pities her misfortunes and solemnly swears never to divulge her secret. Years later, to Lady Mary's horror, the beautiful Irene arrives in London and becomes engaged to her son Conrad,...

A young girl whose love for her fiance continues even after her death; a sinister old lady with claw-like hands who cares little for the qualities of her companions provided they are young and full of life; and a haunted mirror that foretells of approaching death for those who gaze into its depths. These are just some of the haunting tales gathered together in this macabre collection of short stories. Reissued in the Tales of the Weird series and introduced by British Library curator Greg Buzwell, The Face in the Glass is the first selection of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's supernatural short...