East Lynne

Mrs. Henry Wood’s most famous sensation novel opens with Lady Isabel Vane, a nobleman’s daughter who marries the earnest lawyer Archibald Carlyle but comes to doubt his love. Jealousy and the whispers of a scheming admirer push her to abandon her husband and children and run off with an aristocratic seducer, a choice that ruins her. Disfigured in a railway crash and believed dead, she returns to her old home disguised as a governess and must watch her own children grow up unable to claim them. First serialized in 1860 and published in book form in 1861, it became one of the era’s runaway bestsellers and a fixture of the Victorian stage. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.