whatever could be Lady Audley's secret? could it be... murder? miscegenation? malfeasance? misdirected malevolence ending in tears, tragedy, and general tawdriness? an assumed identity? flatulence? that not-so-fresh feeling? bigamy? bigotry? child abuse? child abandonment? une affaire de coeur? une affaire de blanchiment d'argent? well, all or some of those things may or may not be a part of this novel - but they are not the secret in question. Lady Audley's terrible, terrible secret is...
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This book was really good fun. A 19th century who-dunnit complete with beautiful but cunning villainess, rambling old houses and an upper-class layabout-turned-detective. Fabulous!

This was one of the first "sensation" novels ever written, and while it doesn't have the sophisticated and multi-layered plots of today that keep us guessing until the very end and on the edge of our seets, it is nonetheless a great page turner and so much fun. This book was originally serialised in a paper back in 186 More...

This is a sadly forgotten but great 19th century sensation novel that rivals some of Wilkie Collins' best books such as The Woman in White and the Moonstone. Its also one of the first to feature a female villain which wasn't typical of early literature. Nevertheless, this dynamic creates an interesting character study which discusses female motives and what they are capable of despite their beauty and grace. This is a great book and it definitely needs to move closer to the top on your to-read l More...

Since this is one of those books that to tell too much of the story would ruin it, I'm only giving you the bare bones. Baronet Sir Michael Audley takes himself a young, beautiful (but penniless) wife, but his eighteen year old daughter Alicia is not quite so enthralled with Lucy's charms. Sir Michael's nephew Robert Audley greets his old friend George Talboys on his return from the gold-fields of Australia, but George is anxious to reunite with the wife and child he left behind when he was unabl More...

Things are not always as they appear, if there's a lesson to be learned from this book...there it is in a nut shell. There was a major curve ball thrown at the end and I was pleasantly surprised. I guess this is what was considered "chick-lit" in the 1800s. Bigamy, murder, lunacy, etc. Good deal!

As you can tell from my status updates on GoodReads, this book took me a ridiculously long time to get through. It was actually for my Vic Lit book club (not school), and the week I had for Thanksgiving wound up being ridiculous, so I've only just had the chance to finish it. Despite the amount of time it took me to read Lady Audley's Secret, I really enjoyed it on the whole.

I have to say that the plot is a bit predictable. It's fairly easy to figure out what the basic idea is. With that being s More...

Loved it. Not in that "wow, what a great piece of literature this hundred and fifty year old book is," but more like it's trashy and awesome and doesn't have a chapter 39. It skips right from 38 to 40. Probably because it's more lurid that way.

Also she calls the character Robert George at one point. Which I checked at all sources I could - apparently that's really not the narrator's issue - it's sic.

Lady Audley, girlfriend? Her secret's so big a Lady Sasquatch could use it for all-day protection More...

One of my more enjoyable reads of the Victorian era. A good story of an English gentleman on the trail of answers to his friend's disappearance. The young wife of his noble uncle becomes the unlikely center of his investigation. I like the way the wheels turn in this well written story. It was a page turner for me and I can see how the "sensational" Ms. Braddon was so popular in her day.

A great psychological mystery. It was a lot of fun and I caught myself yelling at the protagonist, Robert Audley, who completely drove me nuts.

Honestly. How stupid can you be? Sure, it's a great idea to tell the person you suspect of murder that you suspect them, what and where your evidence is (so they can steal or destroy it again?) and who your witnesses are (they've probably killed once, what's to stop them again?). Smart. Then it dawns on him that maybe his suspect could turn all this again More...

This book was surprisingly good! I say surprisingly because I'd just finished the wading-in-hip-deep-concrete that was House of Mirth, and I suspected this book was going to be another in that same genre. Women who need rich husbands and marry for money; women who are ultimately unhappy because they can't prioritize love; women in desperate circumstances. Which it is--but with a twist.

You see, it begins in the traditional way, with a country house and a rich baronet widower who has married a you More...

I think this would be a good book either for a teenager looking for "difficult" books or for someone who generally doesn't like literature.

About fifty pages in, I realized this book had absolutely nothing to say about people, or morality, or society. However, reading to the end wasn't a chore, and the last fifty pages or so actually moved at a rapid pace. Good writing on the part of Braddon? Maybe I had just clued in to the fact that half of every page was description that neither served the plo More...

I wouldn't call this book an early mystery or detective story, since we know the victim, the guilty party and the motive quite early on, as does the book's hero, Robert Audley.

We don't follow along as Audley unravels the crime, so much as we watch him gather clues. Though obvious and redundant it's not a boring read and, while Braddon is no Dickens, she does employ mild humor that makes the story go down easily.

We meet Robert Audley as an idle bachelor. When one of his friends, George Talboys, g More...

Robert Audley, not the most highly motivated individual, finds himself investigating the disappearance of his friend, George Talboys, who is somehow linked to Robert’s aunt, the charming and beautiful – not to mention recent - Lady Audley. Almost universally adored, particularly by her doting husband, Lady Audley has a past that she is desperate to keep from her interfering step-nephew.

Robert is an unusual romantic hero, in that he is not the least inclined to be romantic, or to move himself to More...

The best way I know how to sum up my feelings for this book is that it's a very pleasant read. It's the sort of thing you read in the bath, or on a long, ambling car ride with your mind half-occupied by something else. There are a lot of pretty digressions and descriptions, MOST of which don't drag, about the lime walk at Figtree Court or the paleness of Pheobe Marks' complexion. These things appealed to the very detail-oriented soul in me, as I've always loved books that take time to describe t More...

I haven't met a Victorian sensation novel that I haven't enjoyed yet and this one was no different in that sense. It's a mystery novel, and though you sort of know what Lady Audley's secret it very early on, there are enough twists and turns to keep you flipping the pages as fast as you can. Unlike other novels of this time period (thinking Of East Lynne and Wilkie Collins's books) I found it difficult to become emotionally involved with any of the characters - Braddon tried to infuse them with More...

From Amazon:
The 1860s in England saw the boom of "sensation novels" which is best represented by the gripping thrillers "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone," written by Wilkie Collins. Immediately after the success of the former one, Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote "Lady Audley's Secret," which also became an instant bestseller, quickly making her a celebrity. But, in more than one sense, as you see later.

The story of Braddon's book is clearly inspired by Collins's "The Woman in White" (especia More...

I'm not sure where I got the impression that this would somehow be unreadable, but I was totally mistaken-- this is a brisk little thriller, one where there's equal windows into the working out of the plot of the novel and the ways complicated issues are contested in Victorian culture-- in other words, it's got a good bit of readerly enjoyment to offer as well as grounds for some heavy duty academic analysis-- the last section, about mental illness, for example, is ripe for some sort of Foucauld More...

So this is a "sensation" novel. Hmm. The back cover on my copy describes the main heroine has having "great depth" and "complexity of character," but I honestly don't see that. Most of the characters in this book were quite cardboard. Everyone was in awe of the beautiful but sinister Lady Audley, and she only had to crook her little finger to make everyone fall to their knees like obedient slaves, despite the fact that her lies were so transparently obvious that even a five year old with half a More...

Not a bad read--it has mystery, (murder?), and madness--but to my eyes Lady Audley's secret or secrets, I should say--for there are several layers to this funny child-like lady--aren't all that bad. I see her as a woman weighed down by circumstance and a series of worthless and/or self-righteous men (father, husband, husband, nephew). Not that I applaud her behavior; I think she could have handled the situation much more thoughtfully. But since Victorian culture tends to turn women into caged an More...

I find myself pleasantly surprised at how good this book was! I wouldn't call it a "classic" per se, on the same level as Dickens or some such novel, but Lady Audley's Secret, written in 1862, is considered a classic in the British "sensational novel" (suspense, we'd call it now) tier, as it was one of the first, and well-know in that category. I read a lot of historical fiction and this book has been made mention of many times in some of the books I've read, most notably in Tasha Alexander's La More...

From Musings: When Sir Michael Audley married former governess Lucy Graham, it caused quite a stir in his family. His new wife was closer in age to his adult daughter Alicia, and his nephew Robert was captivated by Lady Audley’s beauty. Robert is a London barrister (although he doesn’t appear to actually do any work), and one day he runs into an old friend, George Talboys, recently returned from three years in Australia. George is shocked to learn that his wife passed away just a few days before More...

Who wants to read an essay on this run-of-the mill Victorian sensation novel?!?!?!

A Mournful Presentiment:
A Synthesis of Childishness, Death, and Fate in Lady Audley’s Secret

In Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon uses childishness to achieve a heightened awareness of death. I will define “childishness” to include the inherent relationship between parent and child, and characters exhibiting childlike behavior. The juxtaposition of death and violence with childishness jars the reader fr More...

The main character in one of my all-time favorite books, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, gets in trouble for reading this book, so I've always felt mildly curious to find out what the fuss was about. Since I can't go to the Betsy-Tacy convention that I was hoping to attend this coming week, and there are no MHL books left on my "to read" list, I decided this is as good a time as any to read it.

Having now finished it, I can't agree with Mrs. Ray or Mr. Kelly that it's trash not worth reading. Granted More...

A sensation novel of Victorian England that rivalled Wilkie Collins' own efforts. What's a sensation novel?

For this reason alone, it is an important work. It was one instrument in the creation of a genre, as well as being amongst the earliest crime novels. This novel includes murder attempts, child abandonment, bigamy, and deceit.

The plot is complex and well-structured, overall a generally good story, and the characters are well-rounded enough. However..... the writing is dull. No, not the dull More...

The Sensation novel is where the detective story – created by Poe –developed and grew. Twenty-five years later Conan Doyle would formalise it and then, of course, it evolved into the most popular fiction of the twentieth century. Looking at this book from the 1860s then, we can see the faltering steps of a whole genre.

In his wonderful essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ Raymond Chandler argues that you can’t overly criticise Doyle for some of the choices he makes in the Holmes stories, as he’s oper More...

Years ago I read dozens of "classics" but I am so glad that this wasn't one of them, and that I saved myself the pleasure of it. This could well turn out to be one of my favourite reads of 2012. Audley, a village in Essex is home to Sir Michael Audley, who in his mid fifties marries the beautiful penniless governess of the local surgeon. The new Lady Audley takes up residence at Audley Court, with her new husband and his daughter Alicia. Alicia having had her father to herself for years is non t More...

I had to read this book quickly for an English class: in about four days. I don't feel this detracted from the overall experience. This book was made to be read fast, by hurried commuters rushing about on trains. It is one of the original page-turners, and a gripping read.

Rushing backwards and forwards on trains is something which the main character, Robert Audley, does a lot of. Due to my quick read, I noticed a lot of repetition such as the train journeys, and the re-occuring description of th More...

Rating 3- out of 5*. I wavered between 1 and 2 before landing at this, trying to measure just how annoyed I was for having been right all along. There was only one little twist and certainly a much smaller one than I had expected.

Lady Audley used to be Lucy Graham, a lowly governess, before she married far beyond her station. She is a very beautiful, childish young woman with a mean streak a mile wide. She has a secret and what this is glaringly obvious almost from the beginning for the jaded no More...

It’s not often that I have to re-issue a book three times, after which I have to wait awhile to issue it again as I have exceeded the re-issue limit! This is made even more remarkable in that the book itself is reasonably short – not much more than 300 or so pages. All I can say is that no matter how busy you find yourself, and how little time you have to read, you will find yourself returning again and again to this novel.

This book is described as a “Victorian sensationalist novel” and I can ce More...