Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth — known as E. D. E. N. Southworth — was one of the best-selling American novelists of the nineteenth century, producing a vast output of domestic sensation fiction for an enormous popular readership. Cruel as the Grave is characteristic of her melodramatic style, featuring passionate emotions, dark secrets, and the trials of female characters in a society defined by gender constraint.
Southworth’s work offers a vivid window into the tastes and anxieties of Victorian American popular culture. Download this free public-domain EPUB at Better Gutenberg.