Armadale

Description

When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money - and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction'. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian 'sensation novels'.

Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens' and contributed to Household Works. Collins began by writing plays, but is most remembered for his novels, including The Moonstone (1868) and The Woman in White (1860). He died in 1889. John Sutherland is Professor of English at University College, London. He has edited many books for Penguin Classics, including Anthony Trollope.