Aurora Floyd focuses on its eponymous heroine, Aurora Floyd, the daughter of a wealthy banker, who in his late forties scandalously married a poor actress from a northern county. His young wife died not long after Aurora’s birth, and her daughter was raised by her grieving father, who idolizes the child. Aurora thus grows up spoiled and somewhat headstrong.

After she returns from a Parisian finishing school, it is clear that something happened to her there which has caused a dark cloud to hang over her, causing her father immense grief. When a few years later she is courted and then marries, the secrets of what happened in her teenage years eventually come to light, leading to tragedy.

The novel was published in 1863 after having been serialized in Temple Bar magazine. This came only a year after Braddon first achieved wide popularity with her best-selling novel Lady Audley’s Secret . Aurora Floyd didn’t achieve the same level of popularity, but it was nevertheless well received. It was almost immediately turned into a stage play, and was the basis of a short silent film in 1912.