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Gothic Sensationalism Ellen Wood, St Martin’s Eve (1866)


Ellen Wood is best remembered for her novel East Lynne, which began its serial publication in the New Monthly Magazine in January 1861 at the beginning of the sensation boom which followed the response to Wilkie Col-lins’s The Woman in White (serialized in Dickens’s All the Year Round from 26 November 1859). The serialization of East Lynne also overlapped with the appearance of that other classic of the sensation novel, Mary Elizabeth Brad-don’s Lady Audley’s Secret, which began its incomplete serialization in Robin Goodfellow from 6 July to 28 September 1861, and subsequently re-ran in the Sixpenny Magazine between January and December 1862. Like The Woman in White and Lady Audley’s Secret, East Lynne was a Victorian sensation and a sensational best-seller. Indeed, it was one of the most successful novels of the nineteenth century, going through five editions in the year in which it first appeared in three-volume form and accumulating British sales of around half a million copies by the end of the century. In the latter part of the twentieth century, following the revival of interest in nineteenth-century women’s writing in general and the sensation novel in particular, there were several new editions of this novel aimed both at students and the more general reader. In the nineteenth century East Lynne was also a much borrowed item in the circulating libraries from which many middle class readers obtained their leisure reading material. (Readers could visit these libraries in person or place orders by post, and the number of volumes they could borrow at any one time depended on the level of subscription they paid.) In addition, dramatic adaptations of the novel were a staple of the English popular stage repertoire well into the twentieth century (although, as several of her obituarists lamented, Wood never received a penny from these dramatic adaptations owing to the vagaries of the copyright laws). Wood’s best-seller also enjoyed a similar success in north America, where several publishers brought out pirated editions of the novel. It was also translated into numerous other languages. The success of East Lynne laid the foundations of Wood’s career as popular and prolific author, although none of her subsequent novels matched the sales figures of her first success: St Martin’s Eve, for example, had sold about 31,000 copies by the time of Wood’s death, 90,000 copies by the end of the nineteenth century, and around 190,000 by the early 1920s.

Volume Contents

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    Front Matter
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    Introduction By Lyn Pykett
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    Bibliography of the Fiction of Ellen Wood By Lyn Pykett
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    Chronology Of Ellen Wood’s Life And Works By Lyn Pykett
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    A Note on the Text By Lyn Pykett
  • St Martin’s Eve (1866) By Ellen Wood
    • Volume I
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        I
        The Little Heir
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        II
        Faithful to the Dead
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        III
        The Unexplained Reason
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        IV
        A New Mistress at Alnwick
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        V
        On St. Martin’s Eve
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        VI
        The Alnwick Superstition
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        VII
        A Shadow of the Future
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        VIII
        Gradually Wasting
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        IX
        Changes at Alnwick
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        X
        Miss Rose Darling
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        XI
        Miss Rose’s Elopement
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        XII
        Georgina Beauclerc’s Love
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        XIII
        Mr. Frederick St. John Come to Grief
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        XIV
        The Fair at Alnwick
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        15
        Only as a Brother and Sister
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        XVI
        St. Martin’s Eve Round Again
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        XVII
        Conflicting Statements
    • Volume II
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        I
        Investigation
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        II
        Honour’s Ravings
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        III
        Going Travelling
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        IV
        Adeline de Castella
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        V
        Betrothed
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        VI
        Taking a Portrait
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        VII
        Love’s First Dream
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        VIII
        A Wasting Child
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        IX
        All About A Stupid French Marigold
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        X
        Instilled Jealousy
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        XI
        War to the Knife
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        XII
        Frustrated!
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        XIII
        A Crisis in a Life
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        XIV
        Spoiling The Picture
    • Volume III
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        I
        The Sick Chamber
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        II
        The Little Child Gone
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        III
        Mrs. Brayford’s ‘Belief.’
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        IV
        Louise’s Whispered Words
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        V
        The Reception of the Dead
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        VI
        Unavailing Repentance
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        VII
        Some Months Onwards
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        VIII
        Life at Castle Wafer
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        IX
        A Telegram
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        X
        Breaking a Bishop
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        XI
        Walking Out to Dinner
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        XII
        An Unexpected Visitor
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        XIII
        The Walk on the Terrace
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        XIV
        Locked in the Room
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        XV
        A Meeting in Paris
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    Back Matter