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The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: book review


The Woman in White (1859, this edition 2000) is a classic detective novel by the man that started the genre, pre-dating Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Wilkie (William) Collins (1824-1889) is that man.

London art teacher, Walter Hartright, responds to an advertisement to teach two young girls in the country, and to live in their Limmeridge House in Cumberland, north England, owned by the Fairlie family. It’s a dream job to teach Marian Halcombe and her half-sister Laura Fairlie. Soon Walter takes a liking to beautiful Laura, but she promised to marry Baronet Sir Percival Glyde.

The woman in white, a pale ghostly figure, warns Walter of the evil Sir Percival, and also writes a letter to Laura warning her not to marry the Baronet. When the marriage is confirmed, Walter resigns to travel to Central America for 18 months to forget Laura.

The woman in white knows Sir Percival’s history, and she is not the only one. Of course Sir Percival wants to keep his “evils” a secret. What is his secret? And why does Laura defy the warning and other people’s “bad feelings” to marry Sir Percival and move into his home at Blackwater Park?

The novel has five narrators: (1) Walter Hartright, (2) Vincent Gilmore, lawyer to the Fairlie family, (3) Marian Halcombe, (4) Hester Pinhorn, Count Fosoc’s cook (the count is Percival’s friend), and (5) Mrs Michelson, housekeeper at Blackwater Park.

Given that this novel was written 156 years ago, it’s a little too stylized and the author has a habit of explaining a tad too much, but the genre is in development and is nevertheless suspenseful with twists in the plot. There is no detective in this novel, as there are in the other works of Collins. Instead Walter and Marian are interested in solving the deaths, disappearances and deceits surrounding the Fairlie family and the woman in white. Marian is the strongest character – full of detective curiosity.

The author’s life, and the background history of the novel, is also interesting. Collins lived with Caroline Graves, who was the inspiration for the woman in white character, Anne Catherick. But he also “kept” Martha Rudd, the mother of his three children, in a second house. He did not marry either of them.

This is his fifth novel and the one the author liked the most. It began as a serial in “All the Year Round” magazine, started by British writer Charles Dickens. Collins and Dickens were close friends and literary collaborators. The serial was so successful that “there were long queues of people waiting to buy the next issue … to find out what happened next.”

I can see why it was popular a century and a half ago. Because it was serialized, each chapter has an interesting start, and ends with a hook to keep readers wanting more.


The version I have is the Penguin Readers edition designed to present easy reading to young readers through different levels of difficulty. This one is advanced level (3,000 words). Hence in book form it’s a novella or a long short story, quick and easy to read.

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