This book cover unsettles me

I am not judging this book by its cover, but it honestly creeps me out. Anyway, it’s a detective novel written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1864. This is the first book on my last BA English Literature & Creative Writing reading list.

One of my profs mentioned we will be studying a text written at the same time as the Sherlock Holmes novels, but wasnțt popular at all because it was written by a woman. I don’t know if this is it, but the dates coincide.

I also finished ‘Anna Karenina’ this morning. I loved it. The plot - the characters - the ending. The only problem with this novel is, in my opinion, the title. Yes, it is about Anna, but it is equally about Dolly and Kitty and their husbands, and about Russian culture. George Elliot’s (Mary Anne Evans) ‘Middlemarch’, for example, was also initially titled ‘Miss Brooke’ and it was changed for the same reason.