The Cloven Foot

The Cloven Foot follows the fortunes of John Treverton, who is at a very low point in his life. He has squandered his small inheritance and has had to sell his commission as a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. Though he has been making a small amount of money from drawing comic sketches, he is feeling desperate and miserable when a telegram unexpectedly summons him to the death-bed of his wealthy uncle Jasper. The dying man tells him that he will will his estate to the younger man on one condition-that he marry Jasper's adopted daughter Laura within twelve months. But events in Treverton's past threaten this boon, and soon complications multiply. The novel was generally well-received, with praise for Braddon's deft handling of a complex plot. Sensational elements such as murder, mistaken identity, and bigamy feature prominently in The Cloven Foot, as they do in many of her novels; but an important new theme is that of fraud-a theme which has been identified as part of an increasing trend in the era's sensation fiction towards featuring more white-collar crimes. The Cloven Foot was initially published in serial form in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle in 1878. It was subsequently published in three volumes in 1879. A stage play based on the novel, radically simplifying the plot, was performed in 1890. A fortune, a forced engagement, and a past that refuses to stay buried collide in this twisting tale of murder, mistaken identity, and fraud from the master of Victorian sensation fiction. The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)