Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, published on 1 October 1862. It was the most successful of a long series of novels she wrote in a genre that specialised in inventive and slightly scandalous plots.

George Talboys returns from the Australian goldfields to the wife and child he abandoned three years earlier in poverty, having made his fortune in the meantime, and discovers that his wife has died. He goes to stay with an old friend, and through him comes into contact with the household of the baronet whose daughter the friend intends to marry. There he meets Lady Audley, a beautiful, indolent and apparently harmless young woman whose history nobody has ever established. What begins as idle curiosity turns into suspicion, and the novel asks whether a person with enough nerve and charm can simply invent herself and be believed by everyone who matters. George's investigations become dangerous, and the answer to the question of who Lady Audley was is not one the family wants to hear.

The book was immediately popular, is said to have made a fortune for its author, and has never been out of print; it has been adapted for the stage and for film a number of times.