The Woman in White
The Woman in White is Wilkie Collins's fifth published novel, written in 1859 and set from 1849 to 1850. It is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels". The novel was extremely successful commercially, but contemporary critics were generally hostile. Modern critics and readers regard it as Wilkie Collins's best novel: a view with which Collins concurred, as it is the only one of his novels named in his chosen epitaph: "Author of The Woman in White and other works of fiction".
The story can be seen as an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narrators; draws on Collins's legal training, and as he points out in his preamble: "the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness". Wilkie Collins also drew on memories of his father, the artist William Collins, in the creation of drawing master Walter Hartright, and populates his story with a number of Italian characters, likely inspired by two years spent in Italy during childhood.
In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer listed The Woman in White number 23 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 77 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
Excerpted from The Woman in White on Wikipedia.
The Woman in White
| Author | Wilkie Collins |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Genre | Sensation novel, Mystery story, Gothic Fiction. |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | - |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Collaborative 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 |
| Read online | The Woman in White |