East Lynne was a Victorian bestseller by Mrs Henry Wood (neé Ellen Price 1814-1887). Her plots were melodramatic, often involving murders, thefts and forgeries, and court cases with carefully planted clues making them fore-runners of the modern detective novel. East Lynne enjoyed enormous success following its publication in serial form in the New Monthly Magazine. It was repeatedly dramatised and filmed (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931), and translated into many languages from Welsh to Hindustani. The dramatised version of East Lynne contained the much remembered line ‘Dead – and never called me Mother’; a line that never appeared in the novel.