San Antonio College Library

Aurora Floyd is one of the leading novels in the genre known as sensation fiction a tradition in which the key texts include Wilkie Collins s The Woman in White, Ellen Wood s East Lynne, and Dickens s Great Expectations. When Aurora Floyd was first published in serial form in 1862-63, Fraser s magazine asserted that a book without a murder, a divorce, a seduction, or a bigamy, is not apparently considered either worth writing or reading; and a mystery...

At 18, Philippa Palfrey, the confident adopted daughter of a celebrated academic, exercises her right to learn the names of her real parents. What she discovers is a terrible secret that will change her life forever.

"A story in which two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood represent 'sense' and 'sensibility' respectively. Each is deserted by the young man from whom she has been led to expect an offer of matrimony. Elinor bears her deep disappointment with dignity and restraint while Marianne violently expresses her sadness."--Reader's Encyclopedia.

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.