The Woman in White

Publisher Marketing: THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT (of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing) This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve. If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice. But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place. As the Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance of importance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related on hearsay evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spoken before them. Thus, 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-with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word. Review Citations: Audio File 02/01/2009 pg. 38 (EAN 9789626348840, Compact Disc) - *Starred Review London Review of Books 09/11/2008 pg. 27 (EAN 9780099511243, Paperback) Publishers Weekly 12/04/2006 pg. 51 (EAN 9780864923974, Compact Disc) - *Starred Review Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1995 pg. 136 (EAN 9780679405634, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2000 pg. 132 (EAN 9780679405634, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 187 (EAN 9780679405634, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 116 (EAN 9780679405634, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 155 (EAN 9780679405634, Hardcover) New Yorker (The) 07/25/2011 pg. 75 (EAN 9780553212631, Mass Market Paperbound) Publishers Weekly 02/28/2011 (EAN 9781400119424, Compact Disc) - *Starred Review Audio File 08/01/2011 pg. 36 (EAN 9781441702562, Compact Disc) Contributor Bio:  Collins, Wilkie English novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins was a prolific writer with a body of work comprising thirty novels, over sixty short stories, more than a dozen plays, and a wide range of non-fiction pieces. Collins is best known for his novels The Woman in White, an early sensation novela genre combining shocking gothic horror with everyday domestic settingsand The Moonstone, which is credited as one of the first modern mystery novels. In the 1850s Collins met Charles Dickens and the two struck up a friendship, which lead to Collins becoming a frequent contributor to Dickens s journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Many of his stories have been adapted for film, including Basil, A Terribly Strange Bed, The Moonstone and The Woman in White. Collins died in 1889 at the age of 65.