Product Description

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1319 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 569 pages

About the Author
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) began his literary career writing articles and short stories for Dickens' periodicals. He published a biography of his father and a number of plays but his reputation rests on his novels. Collins found his true fictionalmetier in mystery, suspense and crime. He is best known for his novels in the emerging genres of Sensation and Detective fiction.

Customer Reviews

Still a fantastic read after more than a century
This book was quite unlike any I had previously read. While it was written in 1859 it is still - almost 150 years later - a book as gripping as it presumably was all those years ago for Victorian and Edwardian readers brought up on such spooky classics as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein.

Told in the form of letters and diaries of the different characters involved it unfolds bit by bit and keeps you guessing right up until the very end. Collins's characters seem to come alive and make a lasting impression. As a thriller it easily beats many modern-day thrillers and really does have an unequalled air of menace and threat. Despite its age it is immensely readable and is a true page turner. Simply a must!

Sensational
For me what makes this novel great is not the love story between the social rising Walter Hartright and childish stereotypical heroine Laura Fairlie. Instead it is the depiction of the intelligent and brilliant Marian Halcombe and the wonderfully evil Count Fosco that reveals Collins' true writing talent. The speeches of these characters reveal feminist and social criticism adding an interesting dimension to the novel.

The plot itself is well constructed and the series of narrators makes the novel interesting and varied. The text is full of plot twists and is at times shocking, typical of sensation fiction. Admittedly some portions are a little tedious but I would definitely recommend reading this book.

Yaaaaawwwwnnn
This book is the most rambling, tiresome thing i have ever had the displeasure of reading. I finished it only because it was on my A level syllabus. Avoid like the plague