Lovers of the Victorian fiction of Wilkie Collins know that to discover his female counterpart they need look no further than the works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. She was a prolific author of the kind of dark melodrama much loved by her contemporary audience and her most renowned work, 'Lady Audley's Secret, ' has been often dramatised, filmed and, indeed, has never been out of print from the time of its original publication. Never was the accolade, 'The Queen of Sensation' so well deserved as it was by her. It is not unusual that a writer who produced so much material-and much of that with a flavour of the Gothic-should also turn her talents to the genre of supernatural and strange fiction, since there was much precedent for it among her literary peers and much appetite for it among the reading public. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that this Leonaur collection of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's forays into the other worldly and bizarre runs to four substantial, satisfying volumes. In volume one readers will discover an eerie novel, 'The White Phantom, ' which has all the cliff-hangers, twists, turns, shocks and startling revelations any reader could wish for to keep them on the edge of their seats to the last turn of the page. Accompanying it here are three short stories of the strange, including 'My Dream.' 'The Island of Old Faces' and the flesh creeping 'The Cold Embrace.'
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.