Aurora Floyd - Couverture souple

Braddon, M. E.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0192837273 ISBN 13 : 9780192837271

Editeur : Oxford Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

With Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon had established herself, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood, as one of the ruling triumvirate of 'sensation novelists'. Aurora Floyd (1862-3), following hot on its heels, achieved almost equal popularity and notoriety. Like Lady Audley, Aurora is a beautiful young woman bigamously married and threatened with exposure by a blackmailer. But in Aurora Floyd, and in many of the novels written in imitation of it, bigamy is little more than a euphemism, a device to enable the heroine, and vicariously the reader, to enjoy the forbidden sweets of adultery without adulterous intentions. Passionate, sometimes violent, Aurora does succeed in enjoying them, her desires scarcely chastened by her disastrous first marriage. She represents a challenge to the mid-Victorian sexual code, and particularly to the feminine ideal of simpering, angelic young ladyhood. P. D. Edward's introduction evaluates the novel's leading place among 'bigamy-novels' and Braddon's treatment of the power struggle between the sexes, as well as considering the similarities between the author and her heroine.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

A llRIKO AN ACTUKSS. Faint stroaks of crimson gliinmor licre and tliei damid tlic, ricli darkni ss of the Kentish woods. A utiinin sred finivor has been lij2;htly laid upon the foliajze s])arint ;ly, as tlie artist pnts the lirijrliter tints into his picture; but the grandeur of an A u;;nst sunset blazes upon the peaceful landscape, and lip;hts all into jrlorv. The cncirclinj; woo ls and wide lawn-like meadows, the still ponds of limpid -water, the trim hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undulating hill-tops, melting into the purple distance; laboring-men scottages, gleaming white from the surrounding foliage; solitary roadside inns with brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of lop-sided chimneys; jiobie mansions hiding behind ancestral oaks; tiny Gothic edifices; Swiss and rustic lodges; pillared gates surmounted by escutcheons hewn in stone, and festooned with green wreaths of clustering ivy; viihige churches and ])rim school-houses every object in the fairE nglish ])rospect is steeped in a luminous haze, as the fwiliirht shadoA vs ste i.l slowly upward from tlie dim recesses of shady avoo 1- land and winding lane, and evtry outline of the landscape rlarkens against the deepening crimson of the sky. Upon the iiroad f(i ;-a(I eof a mighty redbrick mansion, built in the favorite style of the early (J eorgian era, the sinking sun lingers long, making gorgeous illumination. The long rows of narrow windows are all aflame witli the red light, and an honest homewardtramping villager pauses once or twice in the roadway to glance across the smooth width of dewy lawn and tranipiil lake, half fearful that there must be something more than natin-al in the :I itt Tof those window.s, and that maybe Maistcr Floyd shouse is afire. The stately red-built mansion belo gs toM aistcr Floyd, as Im is called in the honest paliiii of the Kentish rustics; to Archibald Mart
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

Biographie de l'auteur

MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON (1837—1915), novelist, the youngest daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor and author of several works on sporting subjects. Mary Braddon received a good private education and when very young showed an eagerness to write. About 1856, when she was living near Beverley in Yorkshire, a local printer offered her ten pounds for a serial story that should combine ‘ the humour of Dickens with the dramatic quality of G. W. M. Reynolds ’. The girl of nineteen produced a lurid story, Three Times Dead, or The Secret of the Heath, which was prepared for publication in penny numbers illustrated with violent woodcuts. But the printer went bankrupt and, although the whole story was set up in type, it is doubtful whether publication was ever completed. Later on the story was re-written, entitled The Trail of the Serpent, and in 1861 re-issued. In 1861 Mary Braddon published Garibaldi, and Other Poems, and a short novel, The Lady Lisle. A book of stories appeared in 1862, and in the same year, in response to an eleventh hour request from John Maxwell, a publisher who was preparing to launch a periodical named Robin Goodfellow, she wrote Lady Audley‘s Secret. Robin Goodfellow, after struggling through twelve numbers, died. Lady Audley was at the last moment transferred to The Sizpenny Magazine, where it attracted the attention of Lionel Brough, then acting as literary adviser to the speculative publishing firm of Tinsley Brothers. Late in 1862 it appeared as a three-volume novel and had a success both immediate and irresistible. From 1862 to the present day Lady Audley’s Secret has not ceased to sell.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford Paperbacks
• Date d'édition: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0192837273
• ISBN 13: 9780192837271
• Reliure: Broché
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 498
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible