In the introduction to Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, editor David Skilton notes that if you were a "novel reader in the early 1860s you were fortunate indeed". I think I have to concur. Along with Lady Audley's Secret you could choose from works by the likes of such authors as Anthony Trollope (Framley Parsonage), George Eliot (Mill on the Floss and Romola), Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), and Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White and No Name), which were all written at about the same time.
Braddon rose in notoriety at this time (and I can easily see why she did) rivaling Wilkie Collins in her ability to shock and create a sensation with her novels. I think Lady Audley's Secret must be the best-known among her work, though she wrote over 90 novels. After a short career on the stage she turned to writing to help support her mother. Her father was unfaithful and left them when Mary was a young child. You have to wonder how much Braddon must have used her own experiences in her writing. She would go on later to live with the publisher, John Maxwell, though they could not initially marry. He already had a wife in an insane asylum. Braddon helped raise his five children and bore him six more (all the time writing!). Unsurprisingly Braddon was called to task for her lifestyle (see what sort of a woman writes those sorts of books), though Wilkie Collins, who had more than a few skeletons in his closet, was not. Hmm.
Lady Audley is fair and lovely, reminiscent of a Pre-Raphaelite heroine, almost childlike in her innocence really. Her goodness must thus follow, but Lady Audley is deceptive and treacherous. She's concerned mostly about saving her own skin no matter how. Perhaps her difficult childhood has hardened her to become so. Lady Audley didn't start out a lady. The former Lucy Graham was a governess when she caught the eye of Sir Michael Audley. Sir Michael is much older with a grown daughter nearly of an age with his wife. He falls head over heels in love with the sweet, beautiful Lucy and marries her. Alicia, his daughter, despises her.
The novel turns into a sort of mystery when Sir Michael's nephew Robert discovers secrets in Lady Audley's past that connect her with the disappearance of his very good friend, George Talboys. I'm purposely going to be vague on the plot of Lady Audley's Secret as it's far more entertaining to have it all unfold before your eyes. Hopefully I won't be giving too much away to say the novel's full of topics that must have raised more than a few Victorian eyebrows--bigamy, murder, child abandonment, arson, madness and blackmail.
Although the novel is well plotted and trots along at a nice brisk pace, Lady Audley is a complex character as is her nemesis Robert Audley. She's deceitful and manipulative, but I couldn't hate her. Robert is a barrister, though his aristocratic background means he can lead an indolent life, reading French novels, smoking his German pipe filled with Turkish tobacco. The interplay between the two characters was interesting psychologically. I thought Robert's search for George Talboys was rather telling and wondered what exactly he was repressing.
Lady Audley's Secret is as much of a page turner today, as it must have been for Victorian readers. There's a lot more to think about than only what you see on the surface. I've read a few interesting articles about the book, which make me wish I was studying this in a class. I'm digesting all the information still and don't think I could do it justice by trying to discuss it here. I'm really intrigued with the ties between gothic literature and sensational novels as well as female authors and readers. Although Lady Audley is an impressive anti-heroine, I still count Wilkie Collins's Lydia Gwilt of Armadale as the most finely crafted femme fatale as any I've come across in literature. I look forward to reading Braddon's Aurora Floyd and The Trail of the Serpent now (both on my bookshelves), though next up is Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady (possibly the first novel featuring a woman as a detective).
Edited: I've edited this post slightly. I think in the reading I did after the fact, I've muddled some of the assumptions I made about the character of Lady Audley. This is a very interesting period, and I'd love to read and learn more about it, but I don't want to steer anyone in an erroneous direction. For a very excellent review of Lady Audley's Secret, I highly recommend Victoria's post from last year, however.