The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.

[Vorchia]

Hi everyone!

I just finished reading another Victorian classic. I rather like Victorian literature I guess... Well that and when I take my literature list to the library its of course a matter of what isn't lent out already and the Victorian classics aren't being borrowed that much...
I know the title sounds really crappy book but I can tell you the title is a bit misleading. Woman in white to me means, woman in a wedding dress aka a sappy, disgusting 13 in a dozen romance of the likes of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. It is far from being so!
This book is a mystery novel. And its a nice one at that! Its well written and in quality it can compare to the Sherlock Holmes stories, which you all ought to read as well.
Its got plenty of character torture, suspense, character diversity and development to keep you entertained throughout. ;D
Its 'the first 'sensational' novel ever to be written in English, 'sensational' being the ancestor of detective and mystery stories.

Wikipedia about this book:

The story
The story begins when the hero, art master Walter Hartright, encounters a mysterious woman dressed all in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. She is in a state of confusion and distress, and Hartright helps her to find her way back to London. In return, she warns him against a certain (un-named) Baronet, "a man of rank and title". Immediately after they part, Hartright learns that she may have escaped from an asylum.

He goes to Cumberland to take up a position as art tutor at Limmeridge House to two young women - Marian Halcombe and her wealthy half-sister Laura Fairlie. He finds to his amazement that the story of the woman in white may be entangled with the lives of the two sisters. As a further complication, Walter and Laura fall rapidly in love. But she is already engaged, by her father's wish, to a man named Sir Percival Glyde.

Walter and Marian together delve deeper into the mystery of the strange woman, and engage in a battle of wits with Glyde's enigmatic Italian friend Count Fosco.

Discussion
The various strands of the plot combine to produce a thrilling story, leading this particular type of fiction to be described as 'sensation'.

The Woman In White is also an early example of a particular type of Collins narrative in which several characters in turn take up the telling of the story. This creates a complex web in which readers are unsure which narrator can, and cannot, be trusted. (Collins used this technique in his other novels, including The Moonstone.) This techinique was also used by other novelists of the period, including Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.

As was customary at that time, The Woman in White was first published as a magazine serial. The first episode appeared on 29th November 1859 in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round in England, and Harper's Magazine in America. It caused an immediate sensation. Julian Symons (in his 1974 Introduction to the Penguin edition) reports that "queues formed outside the offices to buy the next instalment. Bonnets, perfumes, waltzes and quadrilles were called by the book's title. Gladstone cancelled a theatre engagement to go on reading it. And Prince Albert sent a copy to Baron Stockmar."