# Aurora Floyd

Aurora Floyd is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published on 1 January 1863. It is thematically similar to her highly popular novel Lady Audley's Secret (1862).

## Plot

Aurora Floyd is the spoiled, impetuous, but kind hearted daughter of Archibald Floyd, a wealthy banker and his wife, an actress who died shortly after Aurora's birth. At the age of 17, she is suddenly sent away from her home, Felden Woods, to a Parisian finishing school, but returns home to Felden Woods in Kent in late August 1857 after an absence of 15 months (meaning she most likely started attending her Parisian finishing school around May 1856). At a ball held for her 19th birthday, she meets 32 year old Captain Talbot Bulstrode, the eldest son of a Cornish baron. While otherwise down-to-earth, Talbot is extremely proud of his family's heritage and is looking for a wife without the slightest blot to her reputation. He believes he may have found this ideal woman in Aurora's cousin Lucy, but he quickly realizes that, while she is pure and innocent, he is not in love with her and begins to fall in love with Aurora, of whom he had originally taken little notice. When out for a walk, Aurora, Talbot and Lucy meet John Mellish, an old school friend of Talbot's. John falls instantly in love with Aurora and the two men soon realise that they are both rivals for Aurora's affection, although Aurora has shown little interest in John. Talbot proposes to Aurora, but she rejects him. John also proposes and is rejected. Talbot goes to say goodbye to Archibald, but instead finds Aurora in a faint. When he revives her, he proposes again and this time they become engaged. He later finds that, before fainting, Aurora was reading a newspaper which contained an article about an English jockey named Conyers who had died in a horse-racing accident in Germany. Talbot eventually learns that soon after arriving at the Parisian finishing school, Aurora ran away and when he questions her about the 15 months of her life before she returned to Felden Woods in late August 1857, she refuses to account for her actions and will only tell him that her father knows what happened and that it broke his heart. Unable to bear the shame that this secret will probably bring to his family, Talbot ends his engagement with Aurora even though he is still in love with her.
Following the end of the engagement, Aurora endures a months-long illness, during which time John stays near the family as he has become a favourite of Mr. Floyd's and, despite knowing that Aurora does not love him, he once again proposes to her. Aurora tells him why Talbot ended their engagement, although she does not disclose the nature of her secret, and when John again asks her to be his wife, she accepts his proposal, they are married and she moves to John's home, Mellish Park. She meets the repulsive Stephen Hargraves, who was once the favourite groom of John's father. 20 years before, Hargraves suffered a brain injury in a hunting accident and since then he has worked at various jobs around the stables although most of the other stable hands are wary of him due to his uneven temper. Aurora has John fire Hargraves following an incident of cruelty involving her cherished dog. When a new trainer is needed at Mellish Park, John receives a recommendation from a friend and Aurora becomes hysterical when she hears that the man's name is James Conyers. When John asks her about her reaction, she will only say that Conyers once worked for her father and that he knows something of her secret. Despite this, she agrees to have him come to Mellish Park. Conyers arrives and takes up residence in a lodge house on the Mellish property. He hires Hargraves to look after the lodge, fully knowing the resentment Hargraves has for Aurora, and tells Hargraves not to worry about Aurora trying to have him removed again. Suspicious of the connection between Aurora and Conyers, both Mrs. Powell and Hargraves eavesdrop on a private conversation between the two and hear Aurora offer Conyers £2,000. A week after his arrival, Conyers is found dead in the woods, having been shot in the back. It is revealed that Aurora and Conyers had been married after Aurora ran away from the Parisian school, thus making her marriage to John illegal, although at the time she had married John, she had believed that Conyers had died in the horse racing accident in Germany. Unable to face the man she has grown to love and bring more shame and disgrace to him, she runs away from Mellish Park and goes to Talbot and Lucy (who have been married) in London seeking Talbot's advice. The next morning, Talbot fortuitously meets John who has stopped in London on his way to see Aurora's father and Talbot reunites the two lovers. Following Talbot's advice, Aurora and John are legally married as soon as possible and return to Mellish Park only to find that, through Mrs. Powell's machinations, rumours that implicate Aurora in Conyers' murder have spread around the village and surrounding area. Eventually, a distance grows between John and Aurora because she believes that the shame she has caused him has made him stop loving her and that he, although still in love with her, has doubts about her innocence. On the night of their return to Mellish Park, but unknown to her, the murder weapon was found - a pistol of John's that he had been cleaning on the morning of the murder along with other guns. He had stepped out for a moment and returned to find Aurora putting the weapons back in order as she was accustomed to do. Talbot convinces John that anyone could have taken the pistol and John and Aurora are reunited once again.
A Scotland Yard detective, Joseph Grimstone comes to Mellish Park to investigate and finds clues which point to Hargraves as the murderer, but Grimstone is unable to find proof. Out walking one night by the lodge where Conyers was staying, Talbot sees a dim light inside and goes to investigate. He finds Hargraves who has returned to the lodge to retrieve the £2,000 that he took from Conyers after murdering him. After a struggle, Hargraves is subdued and, after confessing his crime, is eventually hanged.

## Characters

* Aurora Floyd - black-haired, beautiful daughter of Archibald Floyd and Eliza Floyd (née Prodder)
* Talbot Bulstrode - proud heir to a wealthy Cornish baronetcy and captain of Her Majesty's 11th Hussars; falls in love with Aurora, but rejects her when he learns of the secret stain on her reputation
* John Mellish - owner of Mellish Park in Yorkshire; a big man about 30 years old, but with a childish enthusiasm and innocence; he also falls in love with Aurora
* Archibald Martin Floyd - widowed father of Aurora; a wealthy Kentish banker of Scottish descent and owner of Felden Woods; married at the age of 47
* Lucy Floyd - Aurora's first-cousin-once-removed; eldest daughter of Archibald's nephew Alexander; she is Aurora's closest friend and confidante; angelic and well-educated, but rather simple and meek otherwise; she is secretly in love with Talbot
* Mrs. Alexander Floyd - Lucy's mother; she also acts as a mother-figure to Aurora
* Mrs. Walter Powell - widowed governess/chaperone to Aurora and later her housekeeper after Aurora's marriage; spiteful and envious of Aurora
* James Conyers - very handsome, but lazy, selfish and unscrupulous; he is able to play on his good looks to make people think well of him; lame due to a horse racing accident that nearly killed him; he is hired as the new groom and trainer at the stables of Mellish Park
* Stephen Hargraves - short, fat and ugly; he initially works in the stables at Mellish Park; has a brain injury suffered in a hunting accident years before
* Capt. Samuel Prodder - Aurora's maternal uncle, left England to go sailing when Aurora's mother was still a young girl
* Matthew Harrison - a dog-fancier who attempts to blackmail Aurora with knowledge of her secret
* Joseph Grimstone - a Scotland Yard detective who investigates the murder of James Conyers

## Publication

Aurora Floyd was first serialised in London's monthly Temple Bar magazine between January 1862 and January 1863; its success "caused an unprecedented run on the magazine". It was then published in 1863 in three volumes by William Tinsley. This was only a few months after the publication of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's other famous novel, Lady Audley's Secret, which was published in October 1862. The two novels not only helped to establish a literary genre but made Braddon a fortune, with which she purchased a stately home.
When the three volume set was published in 1863, the publishers announced her name for the first time as 'Mary Elizabeth Braddon' rather than the gender-neutral M.E. Braddon. The first single-volume edition of the text appeared at the end of 1863.
One of the inspirations for the eponymous Aurora Floyd was Catherine Walters, also known as 'Skittles', an infamous high-class courtesan who made her debut in 1861. She became known for riding along Hyde Park in a pony carriage. Within the novel, Aurora Floyd is frequently described as donning a pork pie hat and having an affection for the stables, both traits which would have brought Catherine Walters to the mind of the Victorian reading public.

## Reception

Aurora Floyd is considered one of the pioneers of the sensation novel genre, containing as it does a sense of realism within its domestication of criminality. The rise of this genre concerned many conservative critics, who believed that it might represent the normalisation of vice within the middle classes, and an enthusiasm for the lurid and gruesome within published entertainment.
In an anonymous review published in 9 November 1865 edition of The Nation, Henry James argued that Aurora Floyd represents an improvement not only of Wilkie Collins' mode of the sensation novel, but also serves as a more complex and nuanced tale than Miss Braddon's previous book, Lady Audley's Secret:
   Lady Audley was diabolically wicked; Aurora Floyd, her successor, was simply foolish, or indiscreet, or indelicate-- or anything you please to say of a young woman who runs off with a hostler. But as bigamy had been the cause of Lady Audley's crimes, so it is the cause of Aurora's woes.
Leo Tolstoy, who admired Braddon's works, is known to have read Aurora Floyd. According to his sister-in-law, it partly inspired the character Natasha in his War and Peace.
Although eminent Victorian critics derided these sensation novels as ephemeral trash, soon to pass into deserved oblivion, Braddon's work, far from being long-forgotten, has prompted a plethora of 21st-century critical studies. Thus Wiley-Blackell's A Companion to Sensation Fiction (2011), the first comprehensive guide to the sub-genre, while devoting three chapters to Wilkie Collins, gave five to Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one specifically to Aurora Floyd.

## Adaptations

In 1863, the same year as the novel was published, Aurora Floyd was adapted for the stage by Colin Henry Hazlewood and first performed at the Britannia Theatre Saloon in the Hoxton district just north of the City of London.
The script was subsequently published by Thomas Hailes Lacy as the 85th in his series Acting Edition of Plays. Tinsley also dramatised other works by Braddon, notably Lady Audley's Secret.
An American silent film adaptation of the book was released in 1912 to mixed reviews. It was directed by Theodore Marston and starred Florence La Badie in the title role.