Abstract/Summary

Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood (1814–87) was one of the bestselling British novelists of the nineteenth century. Best known for her sensation novel East Lynne (1861), she published over forty novels in addition to scores of essays, reviews, and short stories. Though conservative in tone, much of her work focused on issues that encouraged radical and controversial debate, including marriage legislation, women's rights, class, industrialism, and religion. Vastly popular in her own century, yet unpopular throughout much of the twentieth, she is now attracting increasing amounts of attention from critics who view her works as central to developments in popular literature, gothic fiction, sensationalism, and nineteenth-century interdisciplinarity.