The Woman in White

Walking to London late one summer night, the young drawing master Walter Hartright meets a woman dressed all in white who has escaped from an asylum. Soon after, he takes a post teaching two half-sisters in Cumberland, the gentle Laura Fairlie and the brilliant Marian Halcombe, and discovers a strange likeness between Laura and the woman in white, just as Laura is about to marry the charming Sir Percival Glyde.

Published in 1859 and 1860 in Charles Dickens's magazine, the novel was a sensation, and its villain Count Fosco, fat, charming and fond of his white mice, is one of the great characters of Victorian fiction. Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), Dickens's friend and collaborator, tells the story through several witnesses, like a trial. His other masterpiece is The Moonstone.