Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN num: 9780140059809
ISBN number: 0140059806
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 656
Printing Date: November 18, 1982
Publishing house: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sale Popularity Level: 6532538
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Product Description:
Walter Hartright meets the ethereal figure of a woman in white on a moonlit road who is familiar with Limmeridge House in Cumberland, where he is to take up employment as a drawing teacher. The mystery deepens when he learns that she, by all accounts, has escaped from an asylum.
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Rated by buyers 
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I read "The Woman in White" after reading the good reviews here and it did not disappoint. Immersing oneself in a country and time period not one's own is one of the chief magics of reading novels and was true of this book in particular. I sank into the erudite language of these English characters, the customs, the ambiance of a society more than 150 years removed from our own. Imagine yourself walking along a dark country dirt road with no electric lights anywhere. Suddenly, a hand touches your shoulder. You jump and then see a woman dressed all in white! Is she real? Why is she there, alone, on this dark, country road? There was no outside illumination at night. Indoor illumination was by candle. Local transportation was by walking, train or horse. Communicating with people not in your household was via handwritten letters and sometimes took days for the reply to arrive while you sat around sewing, or reading. (There didn't seem to be much for upper-class women to do with their days.) Along with the fascinating intrigue at the heart of this story is the depiction of legal inequities suffered by women back then. (Fortunately, at least for today's American women, society has progressed.)
The vivid characters and settings are richly drawn in a series of first-person accounts, as is Wilkie's "The Moonstone," which is another wonderful story. Both, actually, are highly satisfying books, highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
As an English professor who finds excellent vocabulary usage a thing of the past, this book provides the ultimate language high. The words, strung together like lights on a Christmas tree, give exuberance and thought to a novel that reads exquisitely. Reading many of the sentences over and over again to give myself the pleasures not often able to be achieved in this time period, I became lost in London, then at Blackwater Park, and everywhere in between. A true Anglophile and bibliophile's dream.
Because the book is written from the various persons involved in the drama, the reader is able to gain insight into each's personality, and oftentimes I found myself a little too sympathetic to characters who I felt may not deserve such recognition. (Count Fosco, for one...so revolting yet at the same time his enamour of Marian and his obvious detail to the care of his "pets" gave the reader a sense of humanity in an otherwise disgusting and subhuman man).
It took me a long, long time to read this book. However, I relished it like the final bits of cake... slowly and methodically, savoring every moment. On the one hand, the ending of the book would provide me with the answers I so emphatically desired, yet that would also determine the finality of the enjoyment of each word and sentence I came to treasure throughout the hours I spent curled in my bed, late into the early hours of the morning, drifting off to the picture of a dark lake surrounded by trees and a boathouse, with the whispering voices of the ghosts of all who live in the book.
A tremendous, tremendous joy to read. All hail Wilkie Collins.
Rated by buyers -
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was a good friend of Charles Dickens. Dickens asked him to contribute a serial to the journal "All the Year Round" of which he was the editor. This all occurred in 1859. The result is one of the very first of the so-called "sensational novels" so fetching to middle class Victorian readers.
The Woman in White takes gothic elements and entwines them into a mysterious web of intrigue set in a middle class typically English landscape of nineteenth century life.
The book is told using the multiple narration method. Most of its over 600 small print pages is told by the artist Walter Hartright. Walter is hired to teach drawing to two half-sisters at an estate in Cumberland. He falls in love with the blonde Laura Farlie while he becomes good friends with the plain sister Marian Halcombe. Laurie disappears one night and is placed in an insane asylum by her evil husband Lord Percival Glyde. The motive is to receive Laura's sizable inheritance. Glyde is assisted in his evil plot by Count Fosco an Italian aristocrat. Fosco is one of the most fascinating bad guys in English Literature. He is witty, well-educated, rotund and has several exotic pets such as white mice, a cockatoo and canaries. Laurie is kidnapped and replaces the mad Anne Hathrick in the asylum where she is eventually rescued by Walter. Walter weds Laura and Marion remains a spinster.
The plot is very complex featuring forged marriage records, abduction, duplicity and murder
Twos are important to Collins. There are two evil men in Fosco and Glyde; two good women in Marian and Laura and two estates-Limmeridge in Cumberland and the sinister Blackwater Park the residence of Percival Glyde.
The book also has many interesting minor characters presnting a realistic portrait of life in upper middle class British society. The plot will keep you guessing and the various narrators keep the reader alert. Not all the narrators tell the truth!
The dullest person in the book is Laura! Walter is, in my opinion, a ninny for not marrying the much brighter and more loving Marian Halcombe.
Collins style is similar to Dickens and his novel will give you many hours of reading pleasure.
Rated by buyers 
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The very first 100 pages are the hardest to get through, but once Collins ushers his readers and protagonist alike into the isolated gloom of Limmeridge House it becomes plain why this is one of the most celebrated mysteries ever written. The lead couple is rather bland, in particular the heroine, but that weakness is more than compensated for by the presence of such memorable characters as the clever, resourceful Marian Halcombe and the insidious Count Fosco. The tale of greed, murder, madness, revenge and conspiracy that unfolds is well worthy of being considered one of the best and most influential gothic novels of all time.
Rated by buyers -
I am so glad I read this book. What a treat! The names even fit the characters. It was a wonderful book and I now look forward to reading Moonstone.
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