The Woman in White

Name: The Woman in White
Rating: 4.05 (20 reviews)
Author: Wilkie Collins
ISBN: 9780141439617

by Wilkie Collins

4.0

(20 ratings)

720 pages2003PenguinISBN 9780141439617

FictionThrillersPsychologicalRomanceHistoricalVictorianHorror

About this book

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. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Publication Details

Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2003
Pages: 720
ISBN: 9780141439617
Language: en

About Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for *The Woman in White* (1859) and *The Moonstone* (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's works appeared first in Dickens's journals *All the Year Round* and *Household Words* and they collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s, but began suffering from gout. Taking opium for the pain grew into an addiction. In the 1870s and 1880s his writing quality declined with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between Caroline Graves and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children. **Source**: [Wilkie Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkie_Collins) on Wikipedia.