The Woman in white

Wilkie Collins´ "The Woman in White", the first Victorian ´sensation novel´ and one of the earliest mystery novels in English, weaves multiple narratives into a thrilling and suspenseful tale of mistaken identity and dark desires. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with notes and an introduction by Matthew Sweet. 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, the ´Napoleon of crime´, 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. Matthew Sweet´s introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian ´sensation´ fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins´s biographical and societal influences...