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As the inscription on his tombstone reveals, Wilkie Collins wanted to be remembered as the “author of The Woman in White,” for it was this novel that secured his reputation during his lifetime. The novel begins with a drawing teacher’s eerie late-night encounter with a mysterious woman in white, and then follows his love for Laura Fairlie, a young woman who is falsely incarcerated in an asylum by her husband, Sir Percival Glyde, and his sinister accomplice, Count Fosco. This edition returns to the original text that galvanized England when it was published in serial form in All the Year Round magazine in 1860. Three different prefaces Collins wrote for the novel, as well as two of his essays on the book’s composition, are reprinted, along with nine illustrations. The appendices include contemporary reviews, along with essays on lunacy, asylums, mesmerism, and the rights of women.
The events described in the novel take place in the 1850s in England. A young painter from London, Walter Hartright, secures a position as an art teacher at Limmeridge House in Cumberland, which belongs to Frederick Fairlie. On a hot summer night prior to his departure, Walter meets a very strange woman on the empty street, who is dressed in a completely white dress. The woman in white shows a sudden agitation when Walter explains about his new job, but also speaks with love about Mrs. Fairlie, the late owner of Limmeridge House. Walter helps the strange woman to catch a cab, only to encounter two men looking for a "woman in white," who has escaped from a mental asylum. Upon his arrival at Limmeridge, Walter meets those residing there: Marian Halcombe, a daughter of the late Mrs. Fairlie from her first marriage, her sister Laura Fairlie, and Laura's bachelor uncle, Frederick Fairlie. Walter tells Marian about the strange woman he met in London. Intrigued, Marian finds mention of a girl named Anne Catherick in her mother's letters. Mrs. Fairlie became attached to the little Anne because of her resemblance to Laura, and Anne in her turn became attached to Mrs. Fairlie. Meanwhile, Laura and Walter fall in love, but Walter is devastated to learn that Laura is already engaged to Sir Percival Glyde, the owner of Blackwater Park in Hampshire, a wealthy and respected person. The engagement was arranged at the request of Laura's father prior to his death, and she therefore considers herself bound to honor it, despite her love for Walter, and increasing sinister hints about Sir Percival, which suggest he had some connection to Anne Catherick, and may have been responsible for placing her in the asylum. Because of his grief and love for Laura, Walter leaves Limmeridge and departs for Central America. Sir Percival manages to provide explanations for everything concerning Anne, but shows suspicious behavior and also arranges for a marriage contract which benefits him economically and disadvantages Laura. Both Marian and Laura are increasingly upset by the prospect of the marriage, but it takes place anyways, and Laura and Sir Percival depart for their honeymoon in Italy. They are absent for six months, and then return to reside at Blackwater Park, where Marian joins them in order to live as a companion with Laura. The couple returns with Sir Percival's friend, the Italian Count Fosco, who is a sinister character, and his wife Eleanor, who is Laura's aunt, and who seems to be completely under his spell. It becomes clear that Sir Percival is an abusive and controlling husband, and also that he is in bad financial situation and desperate to gain access to his wife's money. Count Fosco seems to be Percival's advisor and helper, and the Countess is also willing to spy and intercept letters, so that Laura and Marian become increasingly isolated and helpless. Laura meets Anne, who tries to caution her and refers to a secret about Sir Percival, but once Sir Percival learns of this meeting, he becomes even more abusive and obsessive, convinced that Anne has told Laura a secret that he is desperate to hide. Marian is sure that Fosco and Percival are conspiring against Laura, and perhaps even threatening her life, but before she can do anything, she becomes seriously ill. With Marian incapacitated, Fosco and Percival launch their terrible plan: they trick Laura into believing Marian has left the house, thereby luring Laura to London where she thinks she is following her sister. According to the story as Fosco and Percival will tell it, Laura becomes suddenly ill and dies in London. At about the same time, Anne Catherick is apparently found and returned to the asylum. As Marian recovers, she is convinced there must be more to the story, and goes to the asylum to visit Anne. She is shocked to discover that the woman in the asylum is actually Laura, and helps her to escape.
The Woman in White is an intricately plotted story, organised as a chain of 'witness' statements from a wide diversity of characters designed to unravel a cunning conspiracy against innocent women by a duo of memorable aristocratic monsters, Sir Percival Glyde and his devilish companion, the Italian Count Fosco. It is, ultimately, about a degenerate aristocrat after a middle-class woman's money that passes to him through their marriage if the woman is declared dead. He is a man prepared to plot actual murder to retain his hold on the cash and also to keep his own desperate secret secure. The intricacies of the plot, however, defy easy summary, each convolution and partial revelation driving the reader on to the next scene, and the next, disclosing the secret like a series of Russian dolls. It was said that the eminent politician William Gladstone once cancelled an evening appointment to finish a Collins novel. This is a common reader experience. Everything develops from one of the most famous scenes in Victorian literature: the late-night encounter of Walter Hartright with a mysterious lone woman, near Hampstead Heath, after midnight, 'a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments; her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her' (ch. 4). He is entirely unable to locate her in class terms - she is neither a lady nor of the humble ranks - and although unchaperoned 'at that suspiciously late hour' she is also clearly not a prostitute. This is the enigmatic Anne Catherick, escaped from an asylum, who initially only serves to further the plot by acting as an uncanny double for Hartright's beloved, Laura Fairlie, the main damsel in distress. Fairlie will be the target of Glyde and Fosco's cunning plot. That Anne Catherick's story is only unravelled in the margins of the central narrative somehow further guarantees her enigmatic hold on the imagination. She acts as a powerful cipher.
The Woman in White is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of "sensation novels". The story is sometimes considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. Walter Hartright, a young art teacher, meets a mysterious and distressed woman dressed in white. He helps her on her way, but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. His best-known works are The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone.
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One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White was a phenomenal bestseller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Dickens, Collins' friend and mentor. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall readers today.
Wilkie Collins’ classic tale of murder, intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, featuring updated endnotes and an introduction by Anne Perry “[The Woman in White] has lasted, to our great pleasure, because it is superb storytelling about people who engage our minds and our imaginations and into whose passions we are drawn.”—Anne Perry ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME Generally considered the first English sensation novel, The Woman in Whitefeatures the remarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing master Walter Hartright, pitted against the diabolical team of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. After more than a century since its publication, Wilkie Collins’s psychological thriller has never been out of print.