The Woman in White

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared. Wilkie Collins' controversial novel was partly inspired on a real-life 18th century abduction and unlawful imprisonment. It was one of the first works of 'detective' fiction with a storey knitted together from numerous characters. In 1859, the storey created a stir among readers by capturing their attention with a haunting initial scene in which the enigmatic 'Woman in White,' Anne Catherick, meets Walter Hartright. The novel's chilling, suspenseful, and tense mood remain as evocative for readers today as they were when it was first released.

From the Publisher:

"There in the middle of the broad, bright high-road-there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven-stood the figure of a solitary woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments." Thus young Walter Hartright first meets the mysterious woman in white in what soon became one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century.

Secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and locked asylums, and an unorthodox villain made this mystery thriller an instant success when it first appeared in 1860, and it has continued to enthrall readers ever since.

From the hero's foreboding before his arrival at Limmeridge House to the nefarious plot concerning the beautiful Laura, the breathtaking tension of Collin's narrative created a new literary genre of suspense fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing.

Collins other great mystery, The Moonstone, has been called the finest detective story ever written, but it was this work that so gripped the imagination of the world that Wilkie Collins had his own tombstone inscribed: "Author of The Woman In White. . . "

​Includes a Notes section and knowledgeable introduction by Symons, a known critic of British detective stories. Collins was a friend of Dickens and wrote many novels, including The Moonstone and The Woman in White "probably still the greatest mystery thriller in the language." Collins died in 1889 and his many works of fiction are still read in college lit classes today.​

REVIEW

Audie Award for Classic (2011)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

His best-known works are The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868), considered the first modern English detective novel.

Born into the family of painter William Collins in London, he lived with his family in Italy and France as a child and learned French and Italian. He worked as a clerk for a tea merchant.

After his first novel Antonina was published in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend, mentor and collaborator. Some of Collins' works were first published in Dickens' journals All the Year Round and Household Words and the two collaborated on dramatic and fictional works.

A close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March 1851 until Dickens' death in June 1870, William Wilkie Collins was one of the best known, best loved, and, for a time, best paid of Victorian fiction writers. But after his death, his reputation declined as Dickens' bloomed.

​Now, Collins is being given more critical and popular attention than he has received for 50 years. Most of his books are in print, and all are now in e-text. He is studied widely; new film, television, and radio versions of some of his books have been made; and all of his letters have been published. However, there is still much to be discovered about this superstar of Victorian fiction.

​Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins' family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole's boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand.

​In 1846, Collins became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851, although he never practised. It was in 1848, a year after the death of his father, that he published his first book, 'The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A'., to good reviews.

​The 1860s saw Collins' creative high-point, and it was during this decade that he achieved fame and critical acclaim, with his four major novels, 'The Woman in White' (1860), 'No Name' (1862), 'Armadale' (1866) and 'The Moonstone' (1868). 'The Moonstone', is seen by many as the first true detective novel T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels ..." in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.​

PRODUCT DETAILS​​

• Publisher ‏ : ‎‎Penguin Classics; Revised edição (30 julho 1975)​
• Language ‏ : ‎English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎648 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎0140430962
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎978-0140430967
• Peso do produto ‏ : ‎379 g
• Dimensões ‏ : ‎13.06 x 3.1 x 19.71 cm