Wilkie Collins – ‘The Woman in White’ 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 offense 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 several Italian characters, likely inspired by two years spent in Italy during childhood.