East Lynne

East Lynne by Ellen Wood 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.

The much-quoted line "Gone! And never called me mother!" (variant: "Dead! Dead! And never called me mother!") does not appear in the book; both variants come from later stage adaptations.

The book was originally serialised in The New Monthly Magazine between January 1860 and September 1861, being issued as a three-volume novel on 19 September 1861.

Lady Isabel Vane is distraught when her beloved father dies suddenly and the earldom and all the property goes to a distant relation, leaving her homeless and penniless. She is a beautiful and refined young woman, who (for lack of other options) marries the lawyer Archibald Carlyle who buys her former home, East Lynne.

Unfortunately his elder sister Cornelia also comes to live in East Lynne; she hates that marriage and by taking over the household makes Isabel's new life miserable. Mr Carlyle is a very kind man, who had previously had a friendship with local lady Barbara Hare, who had hoped to marry him. Isabel leaves her hard-working lawyer-husband, and her infant children, and the miserable household, to elope with an aristocratic but poor Captain Francis Levison.

This is because she jealously suspects her husband's friendship with Barbara Hare and Levison misleads her into a wrong interpretation of a meeting. However once abroad with Levison she realises he has no intention of marrying her, despite her having borne their illegitimate child. He deserts her.

Her cousin Lord Mount Severn comes to visit her in Europe and offers to support her. She finds out from him that her husband was not unfaithful. On the way back to England, Lady Isabel is badly injured in a train accident, the baby is killed and she is wrongly reported dead.