© Columbia University Press
In Lady Audley's Shadow: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Victorian Literary Genres
December, 2010
Cloth, 256 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-4115-4
Edinburgh University Press
$105.00
Written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1862, Lady Audley's Secret is an early pulp detective novel that proved wildly successfuly (and highly condemned) in its day. Even more remarkable, the book has never gone out of print. Reclaiming the significance and widespread influence of this overlooked text, Saverio Tomaiuolo connects the novel to Victorian literature's three main genres: the Gothic, the detective, and the realistic.
Through an analysis of narrative, ideology, and culture, he shows that Braddon's manipulation of Victorian literary convention sets her apart from other sensational writers and reaffirms her role in the nineteenth-century literary scene. In building his argument, Tamaiuolo also critically reads Braddon's The Trail of the Serpent , Eleanor's Victory , John Marchmont's Legacy , Henry Dunbar , The Doctor's Wife (an ambitious rewriting of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary , The Lady's Mile , "Good Lady Ducayne" , Phantom Fortune , Rough Justice , and His Darling Sin .