East Lynne is an English sensation novel of 1861 by Ellen Wood, writing as Mrs Henry Wood. A Victorian best-seller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot, centring on infidelity and double identities. There have been numerous stage and film adaptations.
An edition of East Lynne published by Collins
The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s, centering taboo material shocking to its readers as a means of musing on contemporary social anxieties.
Captioned "The Novelist who invented Sensation", caricature of Wilkie Collins in Vanity Fair, 3 February 1872