The Trail of the Serpent; or, the Secret of the heath
A sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, issued in 1861 by the London publisher W. M. Clark as cheap illustrated fiction for a mass serial-reading public. The captioned wood engravings, cut by Beckforth of Hull, stage melodramatic interiors: a detective questioning a seated woman, an opium smoker with a dream-bubble, a family parlour with heavy drapery, figures bursting through doors, all in coarse dense hatching.
