Mrs. Henry Wood (1814–1887)

I made it to p 80. Mrs H Wood can write...but there's an awful lot going on.
A feisty heiress...and a sweet vicar's daughter both after the same man. Fever doing the rounds. The Cinderella-like Ethel, always playing second fiddle to her sister. Property issues. A rather fractured family, following (is he dying?) Father's 2nd marriage. A mysterious old retainer in Scotland who marries people as a sideline... And a strange, supernatural shadow that appears whenever a death is imminent...

Just didnt feel up to any more. Tho she writes well...… (more)

A sensational Victorian novel that tackles jealousy, love triangles, mistaken identities, murder, and divorce, East Lynne was seven hundred pages of unputdownable. I was enthralled by the character of Lady Isabel Carlyle and her ill-fated life story. Not that she doesn’t hold some responsibility for her own fate, but was there ever a woman born under a less auspicious star?

For the Victorians, marriage was still a sacred institution and inviolable, divorce was a new idea and allowed only for the most immoral of infractions. For someone who wrote under the appellation, Mrs. Henry Wood, it must have been a struggle to understand what forces could compel a decent woman to end up with one. While there could be no doubt where Mrs. Wood stood on this, I thought she handled the subject in a fair and thoughtful manner and painted a sad and tragic, but not a villainous, figure in Lady Isabel.

I followed the story with relish beginning to end, and just when things seemed predictable, I found they weren’t. For anyone who enjoys the works of Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth Gaskell or Wilke Collins, I would say this book is a must.
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