Late one night, a drawing teacher meets a mysterious woman dressed in white. Who is she, and what is her connection to the teacher's new pupil, a beautiful heiress?

"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.

Lord Northcliffe Professor of English at University College, London, John Sutherland has edited numerous World's Classics, including several Trollopes, and Jack London. He is associate general-editor of Oxford Popular Fiction, and is currently editing the Oxford Companion to Popular Fiction.

2008-03-28 Sensational

For me what makes this novel great is not the love story between the social rising Walter Hartright and childish stereotypical heroine Laura Fairlie. Instead it is the depiction of the intelligent and brilliant Marian Halcombe and the wonderfully evil Count Fosco that reveals Collins' true writing talent. The speeches of these characters reveal feminist and social criticism adding an interesting dimension to the novel.

The plot itself is well constructed and the series of narrators makes the novel interesting and varied. The text is full of plot twists and is at times shocking, typical of sensation fiction. Admittedly some portions are a little tedious but I would definitely recommend reading this book.