The Woman in White (Penguin Classics)

‘The most popular novel of the nineteenth century, and still one of the best plots in English literature’ Sarah Waters

The original ‘sensation novel’, The Woman in White opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter with a strange, solitary woman on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in 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 corridors of English country mansions and the madhouse, this is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew Sweet

Review

“Collins was a master craftsman, whom many modern mystery-mongers might imitate to their profit.” —Dorothy L. Sayers

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.