Part of the Smith & Taylor Classics series, this elegant edition revives one of Victorian literature’s most thrilling and subversive novels.
Lucy Graham, radiantly beautiful, born to poverty, and Sir Michael Audley, aging aristocratic widower and fabulously wealthy, are married soon after first glance.
Life is peaceful at old Audley Court until the arrival of Robert Audley– Sir Michael’s nephew– and his friend George Talboys, who is home again after making his fortune in Australia.
When George mysteriously disappears, Robert takes it upon himself to find him again. Developing a detective’s eye, following disturbing clue after clue, Robert becomes convinced his alluring Aunt Lucy isn’t as innocent, or possibly as sane, as she seems.
Lady Audley’s Secret first appeared in Robin Goodfellow magazine in 1861, establishing it as a “sensational” novel to rival Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1860). A cunningly plotted mystery novel as sensual as a Pre-Raphaelite portrait, Lady Audley’s Secret probes mid-Victorian anxieties about the rapid rise of consumerism with the invention of one of literature’s great villainesses who goes to great lengths to secure her greatest desires.
Featuring a conversational afterword from writers Sarah Weinman and Rachel Vorona Cote.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) began writing at the age of eight but it was not until she won an admirer as an actress that she could settle down to write serial fiction. She became a bestselling 'sensation' author and was read avidly by Tennyson, Dickens and Thackery. She wrote over eighty novels.
Rachel Vorona Cote is the author of
TOO MUCH: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today. She has written essays and criticisms for
The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Poetry Foundation, Lapham's Quarterly, and
The Washington Post, and a number of other publications. In a past life, she was ABD at the University of Maryland, where she studied Victorian literature. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.
Sarah Weinman is the author of three books: Without Consent, forthcoming in 2025; Scoundrel, named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, Esquire, CBC, and NPR and a NYT Editor's Choice; and The Real Lolita, named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, BuzzFeed, The National Post, Literary Hub, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vulture, and winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award in Nonfiction. She also edited several anthologies, including Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning; Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Nonfiction/Critical Work; Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America); and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin).
Weinman writes the monthly Crime & Mystery column for the New York Times Book Review. A 2020 National Magazine Award finalist for Reporting and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, her work has also appeared most recently in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York, and Vanity Fair, while her fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Weinman also writes (albeit more sporadically) the “Crime Lady” newsletter, covering crime fiction, true crime, and all points in between. She lives in New York City.
Allison Miriam Smith is a co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. She is also an Acquiring Editor and Publishing & Publicity Manager for Unnamed Press. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California where she was an assistant curator for the USC Doheny Library George Cassady Lewis Carroll Special Collection. She later went on to earn a Masters in 18th & 19th c. Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, working nights at the library. Before Unnamed Press, she was a bookseller at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, CA. She lives in Los Angeles.
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels
Minor Black Figures,
The Late Americans and
Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection
Filthy Animals, a national bestseller, was awarded The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is an Acquiring Editor at Unnamed Press and co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. He lives in NYC.
