3 Review(s)

About The Book : The Woman in White is Wilkie Collins's fifth published novel, written in 1859 and set from 1849 to 1850. It is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels".The story can be seen as an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narrators (including nearly all the principal characters) draws on Collins's legal training, and as he points out in his preamble: "the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness". Collins also drew on memories of his father, the artist William Collins, in the creation of drawing master Walter Hartright, and populates his story with a number of Italian characters, likely inspired by two years spent in Italy during childhood.In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer listed The Woman in White number 23 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 77 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. About The Author : William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which, after Poe's story, Murders in the Rue Morgue, has been proposed as the first modern English detective novel. After Antonina, his first novel, appeared in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some of his work appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round. They also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but became addicted to the opium he took for his gout, so that his health and writing quality declined in the 1870s and 1880s