Lady Audley's Secret
The novel that invented the sensation novel
A governess marries a baronet three times her age, and her husband's nephew starts asking where she was before she came to the village. Braddon serialised it in 1862, sold it through eight editions inside a year, and was denounced from pulpits for putting bigamy, arson and a woman with a plan into an English drawing room — which is precisely why it sold.
Every gothic romance and domestic thriller written since is downstream of this book. Complete in three volumes, in one file, with the volume and chapter divisions intact.
“LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET By Mary Elizabeth Braddon CHAPTER I. LUCY. It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court you had no business there at all. At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand—and which jumped straight from one hour to the next—and was therefore always in extremes. Through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of Audley Court. A smooth lawn lay before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the right there were the”
- Genre
- Romance
- Length
- 497 pages
- Reading time
- 10 to 12 hours
- Language
- English
- Format
- EPUB · DRM-free
- File size
- 408 kB
- Released
- 2005
What you get
- A DRM-free EPUB, emailed the moment your payment confirms. No account, no app, no expiry.
- Read it in the browser, download it, or send it straight to a Kindle.
- $6.99, by card or in bitcoin, straight to Chris Nohall's own account. No middleman ever holds it.
About Chris Nohall
Mystery, sensation and faerie romance from the years before any of it had a genre label. I take texts nobody owns and make editions worth paying for: clean typography, working contents pages, no scanner noise, and sets that belong together. Everything here is DRM-free — the file is yours once you have it.