LADY AUDLEY S SECRET (OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS)

This Victorian bestseller, along with Braddon''s other famous novel, Aurora Floyd, established her as the main rival of the master of the sensational novel, Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of the time as ''high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement.'' Her crime (the secret of the title) is shown to threaten the apparently respectable middle-class world of Victorian England.