Product Description

The Woman in White (1859-60) is the first and greatest `Sensation Novel'. Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue. The novel is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction - Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant `Napoleon of Crime'. A masterwork of intricate construction, The Woman in White sets new standards of suspense and excitement, and achieved sales which topped even those of Dickens, Collins's friend and mentor.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37169 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Customer Reviews

Victorian mystery & intrigue
Chilling, thrilling, mysterious and very dramatic! A mysterious figure, a woman in white, appears out of nowhere on a London street at midnight - she is running away from someone or something. The only person she meets on that lonely road is Walter Hartright, an Art teacher, and little does he know it but he is about to have his life tured upside down. Mysterious letters, ghostly figures by gravesides, kidnapping and poison all follow through the next 700 pages and not a word is wasted! Narrated by several different characters, all portraying their their own experiences, the reader sees the story unfolding before them.

Written as a serialised stroy in a weekly newspaper in 1860, you can almost hear the curtain falling and the audience gasping at the end of each chapter. I could just imagie myself waiting excitedly for each installment to come out to find out what happens next just as they would have when it was published. For a victorian novel, The Woman in White is incredibly fast paced with some of the best characters I have ever come across.

I just loved this book from start to finish. This is what a book should be - something that makes you think about it when you can't get to it and excited to pick it up again. Bravo Mr Collins!! I can't wait to read more of your work.

I Couldn't Put It Down...
...thank goodness I was on holiday and didn't have to!!
I love this book but most of all the mystery, the suspense and the split narrative between several characters.

Wilkie Collins is exceptional - this is my favourite book of all time and one of my copies is a first edition so maybe I'm a bit biased! I first read it about 10 years ago which, in turn, was about 8 or 9 years since my English teacher had banged on and on (and on and on!) about what a literary work of art The Woman In White is. Appears she was absolutely right!

One of the Greatest Victorian Novels
The Woman in White opens with a slightly spooky encounter on Hampstead Heath when our hero of the novel drawing master Walter Hartright comes across a mysterious `woman in white' who is in apparent distress, he then finds she has escaped from an Asylum. Leaving London the next day he thinks no more of it until he meets his new students at Limmeridge House Laura Fairlie and her half sister Marian Halcombe. He finds Laura bears a startling resemblance to the `woman in white' and he then discovers that there may be a link between the women he has met through such a coincidence.

You see this shows why Collins is such a genius as there are lots of other intermingling plots going on that it hard to try and explain them all. I won't apart from the fact Laura and Walter naturally fall in love but she is already betrothed to Sir Percival Glyde so Collins throws in some romantic drama in for good measure too. It is after their honeymoon when Sir Percival and Lady Laura Glyde return to Limmeridge House with a guest Count Fosco and dastardly things start to happen. I won't say anymore for fear of spoiling it by letting you all know too much which would ruin it if you haven't read it.

Suffice to say being a Sensation Novel and being Wilkie Collins there are lots of dark deeds and dubious doings going on with many plot twists to keep you turning the pages to the very end. I also loved the fact that this was narrated by different characters, you felt like you were playing detective with Walter and yet had one up on him as you were getting more clues than he was. It's everything all in one sensation, romance, deceipt and mystery. What more could you want? Not a lot I say!