John Marchmont's Legacy (Oxford World's Classics)

"I am simply steeped in Miss Braddon."--Alfred Lord Tennyson Tennyson was not the only Victorian reader to be captivated by Mary Elizabeth Braddon's fiction. While still in her mid-twenties, Braddon scored two remarkable hits with the sensational Lady Audley's Secret and Aurora Floyd. In John Marchmont's Legacy, Braddon offers a plot charged with drama and mystery, its eerie atmosphere and, above all, the depiction of an extraordinary woman. In remote Lincolnshire, `fenny, misty, and flat always', Olivia Arundel can find no outlet for either her intellectual abilities or her fierce passions, but is compelled to look on as the man she loves has thoughts only for a woman whose gifts are vastly inferior to her own. Braddon once declared that Wilkie Collins, the master of the `sensation novel', was `assuredly my literary father'; she herself has the same skill in weaving a story of mystery, conspiracy, menace and violence, while the energy and vivacity of her narrative are all her own. Expertly edited with an introduction by Norman Page and Toru Sasaki, this is the only edition available of this work that deserves its place alongside Braddon's great works.