East Lynne

Sensation novels were a genre of British novels, published primarily between 1850 and 1870, that focused on suspenseful and melodramatic events. They often included violence, crime, and real or perceived sexual “impropriety,” producing a shocking or “sensational” effect on readers. Sensation novels shared some features with the Gothic novel, including secrets, duplicitous villains, and the specter of danger; however, while Gothic novels were typically set in the distant past (sometimes the medieval era) and in continental Europe, sensation novels were pointedly set in England and made use of contemporary events and technologies, such as train travel. In an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world, the fear that individuals could have secret histories (including criminal ones) looms large in sensation novels. The genre was solidified through the closely clustered publication of three key texts: Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859-60), East Lynne (1860-61), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). The melodramatic plots of all three novels explore the agency and vulnerability of women in the Victorian era while also exploring their capacity for duplicity (in both East Lynne and Lady Audley’s Secret, a woman assumes a false identity and poses as a governess to infiltrate a household).