East Lynne

By Mrs. Henry Wood

Book Overview

When the aristocratic Lady Isabel abandons her husband and children for her wicked seducer, more is at stake than moral retribution. Ellen Wood played upon the anxieties of the Victorian middle classes who feared a breakdown of the social order as divorce became more readily available and promiscuity threatened the sanctity of the family. In her novel the simple act of hiring a governess raises the spectres of murder, disguise, and adultery. Her sensation novel was devoured by readers from the Prince of Wales to Joseph Conrad and continued to fascinate theatre-goers and cinema audiences well into the next century.

This edition returns for the first time to the racy, slang-ridden narrative of the first edition, rather than the subsequent stylistically 'improved' versions hitherto reproduced by modern editors.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192804626
• ISBN13: 9780192804624
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.7" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Condescending snobs need not apply

This book will be enjoyed both by readers who appreciate Ellen Wood's ghost stories and those who devour Sensation fiction. It conveys some of the uncanny atmosphere of the former while remaining as compulsively readable as Lady Audley's Secret. While it is not a Great Work of Literature, let me assure those who genuinely understand and appreciate popular fiction, and are therefore capable of distinguishing between worthwhile examples and trash, that this falls into the former category. I felt that this needed particular emphasis, in order to counteract the hideous possibility that condescending recommendations meted out by self-aggrandizing, obtuse snobs might actually succeed in influencing the perspectives of the impressionable. As for those who have already discovered for themselves that Popular Fiction and Trash are not synonymous; that, furthermore, there is no such thing as Good Trash (after all, if one likes a novel one views as trash, isn't that person bound to renounce either the enjoyment or the disapproval?); and that, most importantly, our Lasting Works of Literature have sprung from a diverse variety of arenas that span the entire range of the culture spectrum; well, maybe they understand why I was peeved enough to pen this little piece.

Disfigured text

Mrs Henry Wood's novel itself doesn't need any recommandation: generations of readers have literally devoured it. My rating however is valid only for the novel in itself.What I should like to comment upon is the edition -- and here my rating is just 2 -- published as a volume of "Everyman's Library"...The text is disfigured by dozens...of misprints -- from a philological point of view, this edition is just useless.The volume is out of print at the moment. This should be welcomed by the editors as an occasion to correct those numberless misprints. If they don't do so, there is only one comment possible on their edition: forget it.