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: #269105 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

About the Author
Lord Northcliffe Professor of English at University College, London, John Sutherland has edited numerous World's Classics, including several Trollopes, and Jack London. He is associate general-editor of Oxford Popular Fiction, and is currently editing the Oxford Companion to Popular Fiction.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely excellent - read it already!
Wonderfully entertaining stuff - this is essentially a pre-television soap opera, much like the novels of Dickens or George Eliot.

The essentials of the story are as follows: our hero is a young painter hired as tutor to a young heiress. The lady in question is remarkably pretty, innocent, sweet-tempered (etc etc) and inevitably our hero falls for her hook, line & sinker. Needless to say the path of true love doesn't run smoothly and not only are they separated, but the heiress is subject to the wicked plots of marvellously nefarious villains.

Sounds cheesy as anything, I know; but the story is fast paced, convoluted and frequently (intentionally!) very funny. Because Collins employs a first person narrative technique, telling his tale through one character's diary then another one's letters, we are allowed an insight into the thoughts and speech patterns of a wide range of characters. Some of them are downright hilarious - particularly our heroine's outrageously camp uncle. As so often happens, it is the secondary (and indeed bit-part) characters who are the most entertaining - the fabulous Marianne (just wait till you read that initial description of her appearance! The contrast between standards of beauty now & then is remarkable...although granted it sounds like she needed immac for that top lip of hers) and the indomitable Count with his pet white mice scampering around, to name my two favourites - and undoubtedly your own. What are you waiting for?

The most wonderful book I have ever read
I took a few pages to click into the Victorian narrative but once I was into it, it gripped from start to finish. This book has the most wonderfully drawn characters and because it switches narrators several times ( Wilkie Collins does this to great effect also in 'The Moonstone') you are just getting lulled into the perspective of one person, when you are then gently jolted and led along by another.

If you want a book with love, romance, mystery and an undercurrent of the sinister running through it I promise you will not be disappointed. You will then be so hooked by Wilkie Collin's writing style that you will want to devour the rest of his books immediately.

A carefully plotted, taut thriller of the old-fashioned kind
`The Woman in White' is a pleasure to read in a simple (but not simplistic) writing style that draws the reader carefully into the plot. All of Collins' novels are a joy and this is no exception. The plot is woven intricately and the mysery continues until almost the last possible moment, involving a cast of diverse and realistic characters. As a contemporary and close friend of Dickens, Collins had a lot to live up to. However, where Dickens is wordy, Collins uses well-chosen words to conjour an atmosphere of unease and inscrutability. This book is a definite must.