Enoch Arden is a poem by the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In the poem, Enoch Arden leaves his wife to go to sea, but is shipwrecked on a lone island and returns home after ten years, only to find his wife happily married to another man. He never reveals his true identity to her, and eventually dies of a broken heart.
- "And on the book, half-frightened, Miriam swore.
- Then Enoch rolling his gray eyes upon her,
- 'Did you know Enoch Arden of this town?'
- 'Know him?' she said 'I knew him far away.
- Ay, ay, I mind him coming down the street;
- Held his head high, and cared for no man, he.'
- Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her;
- 'His head is low, and no man cares for him.
- I think I have not three days more to live;
- I am the man.'"
(Enoch Arden with his dying breath to Miriam, a woman from his hometown)
Enoch Arden in the works by Agatha Christie[]
- Tim Nugent starts a new life in Southern Rhodesia, after it was believed that he died in World War I. He uses the name Arden. (While the Light Lasts)
- A man calling himself Enoch Arden turns up at the Stag Inn. He is suspected to be Rosaleen Cloade's first husband Robert Underhay. (Taken at the Flood)