<i>Lady Audley&rsquo;s Secret</i>&nbsp;has been called &quot;the most sensationally successful of all the sensational novels&quot;. The success of the book, along with Mary Elizabeth Braddon&#39;s other bestseller, <i>Aurora Floyd</i>, established the author as the main rival of the master of the sensational novel, Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of the time as &quot;high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement.&quot; Her crime (the secret of the title) is shown to threaten the apparently respectable middle-class world of Victorian England. The story centres on &quot;accidental bigamy&quot; which was in literary fashion in the early 1860s. The plot was summarised by literary critic Elaine Showalter (1982): &quot;Braddon&#39;s bigamous heroine deserts her child, pushes husband number one down a well, thinks about poisoning husband number two and sets fire to a hotel in which her other male acquaintances are residing&quot;.<br /><br />Elements of the novel mirror themes of the real-life Constance Kent case of June 1860 which gripped the nation for years. The follow-up novel <i>(Aurora Floyd) </i>appeared in 1863. There have been three silent film adaptations, one UK television version in 2000, and three minor stage adaptations.