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Plot. Walter Hartright, a young art teacher, encounters and gives directions to a mysterious and distressed woman dressed entirely in white, lost in London; he is later informed by policemen that she has escaped from an asylum.
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.
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Walter Hartright, a young drawing teacher who lives in London, needs a job and an escape from the city for the autumn months. One night he goes to visit his mother and sister, Sarah, and is surprised to find his friend Professor Pesca, a cheerful Italian whom Walter once saved from drowning, waiting for him at the Hartright’s family home.
The Woman in White, novel by Wilkie Collins, published serially in All the Year Round (November 1859–July 1860) and in book form in 1860. Noted for its suspenseful plot and unique characterization, the successful novel brought Collins great fame; he adapted it into a play in 1871.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Woman in White is considered one of the first mystery novels, known as “sensation novels,” in the nineteenth century and is similar to the modern-day thriller. It is also considered an early example of detective fiction because of Walter Hartright’s use of private detection to solve the various crimes that abound in the novel.
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The Woman in White is generally regarded as the first Sensation Novel and inspired numerous imitations, most notably from Mary Braddon. The story is in part based on an eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment, taken from Mejan's Recueil des Causes Celebres.
