--- product_id: 1210383 title: "The Woman in White" price: "€ 35.97" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.fr/products/1210383-the-woman-in-white store_origin: FR region: France --- # The Woman in White **Price:** € 35.97 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Woman in White - **How much does it cost?** € 35.97 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.fr](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/1210383-the-woman-in-white) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Considered one of the first mystery novels, "The Woman in White" is Wilkie Collins's epistolary novel that tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and when they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where he takes up as an art tutor and meets two half-sisters, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe, who are somehow entangled with this mysterious "woman in white". Review: An Intricately and Infinitely Entertaining Novel - I just read Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White" as part of an OLLI (Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute) course on "Sensation and Gothic Novels." The novel is considered the original mystery novel. Although I've never been drawn to mystery novels, this novel is both fantastical and fantastic. The plot is intricate, the characters are vivid, the writing is gorgeous -- a combination of soaring rhetoric and succinct exposition -- lucid, lyrical, mellifluous, often almost musical. I am particularly fond of Walter Hartright, the novel's most good-hearted and pure-minded character. And the infinitely intriguing and charismatic Count Fosco is a character for the ages: he out-Falstaffs Falstaff. The story is told by a long series of narrators -- some of them central characters, some of them peripheral characters. Each narrator has incomplete knowledge, and each narrator knows things no other narrator knows. Collins was trained in the law, though he never practiced law, and he states at the outset that "the story 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 complex series of events, by making two persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word." The legal beagles among you will enjoy Collins' droll depictions of lawyering and lawyers: * Spoken by a lawyer: "Let us not dispute about our views. I live, professionally, in an atmosphere of disputation, Mr. Hartright; and I am only too glad to escape from it[.]" * Spoken by a lawyer: "It is the great beauty of the Law that it can dispute any human statement, made under any circumstances, and reduced to any form." * Spoken by a lawyer: "I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out in me in that way, We see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession." * Spoken by a lawyer: "She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed. Even lawyers have hearts; and mine ached a little as I took leave of her." * Spoken by a lawyer: "There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but, I think, the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good humor." Review: Worth taking your time - I first started reading this book on November 1 2018. It was chosen as a group classic read by my Goodreads Reading For Pleasure book club. Since I had both the kindle and Audible audiobook, for most of the book I did Immersion reading, which is reading the kindle version while listening to the audiobook at the same time. I continued the book until the beginning of December when health reasons caused me to put it aside until the middle of January. At no time did I consider not finishing the book. It's one of the most unique books that I have ever read. The book is made up of narratives as told by the various people involved in story as it would have been had they been called as witnesses in a court of law. The first and last narrator is Walter Hartright, the hero of the story. He saves his friend, Professor Pesca from drowning, leaving him forever in Walter's debt. In return Professor Pesca is delighted when he is able to recommend Walter for a situation as a drawing master for two young ladies, half sisters, Marian Holcombe and Laura Fairlie, at Limmeridge House in Cumberland. From his arrival at Limmeridge House until the end of the story, Walter's fate is intertwined with that of the two heroines of the story, Marian and Laura. But before his arrival at Limmeridge House, Walter Hartright has a chance meeting with a woman who has escaped from a madhouse, The Woman in White, Ann Catherick. Her fate too becomes intertwined with that of Walter Hartright, Marian Holcombe, and especially, Laura Fairlie. The author, Wilkie Collins, was a great friend of Charles Dickens who published his works in serialized form in a magazine owned by him. The Woman in White was his most successful novel and considered a "Sensation" novel. Today we would classify it in the suspense or thriller genre. The Woman in White is not a fast read because if you read it too fast you might miss something important to the story. There are unexpected twists and turns that you never see coming. I spent quite a bit of time trying to guess what lay behind the actions of the two main villains of the story. What secrets were they trying to hide and what motivated them to behave as they did. I fully intend to read more of Wilkie Collin's works. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #127 in Classic Literature & Fiction #3,749 in Mysteries (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 14,575 Reviews | ## Images ![The Woman in White - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Rbt5-wd5L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An Intricately and Infinitely Entertaining Novel *by W***N on April 5, 2026* I just read Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White" as part of an OLLI (Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute) course on "Sensation and Gothic Novels." The novel is considered the original mystery novel. Although I've never been drawn to mystery novels, this novel is both fantastical and fantastic. The plot is intricate, the characters are vivid, the writing is gorgeous -- a combination of soaring rhetoric and succinct exposition -- lucid, lyrical, mellifluous, often almost musical. I am particularly fond of Walter Hartright, the novel's most good-hearted and pure-minded character. And the infinitely intriguing and charismatic Count Fosco is a character for the ages: he out-Falstaffs Falstaff. The story is told by a long series of narrators -- some of them central characters, some of them peripheral characters. Each narrator has incomplete knowledge, and each narrator knows things no other narrator knows. Collins was trained in the law, though he never practiced law, and he states at the outset that "the story 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 complex series of events, by making two persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word." The legal beagles among you will enjoy Collins' droll depictions of lawyering and lawyers: * Spoken by a lawyer: "Let us not dispute about our views. I live, professionally, in an atmosphere of disputation, Mr. Hartright; and I am only too glad to escape from it[.]" * Spoken by a lawyer: "It is the great beauty of the Law that it can dispute any human statement, made under any circumstances, and reduced to any form." * Spoken by a lawyer: "I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out in me in that way, We see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession." * Spoken by a lawyer: "She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed. Even lawyers have hearts; and mine ached a little as I took leave of her." * Spoken by a lawyer: "There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but, I think, the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good humor." ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Worth taking your time *by R***S on February 20, 2019* I first started reading this book on November 1 2018. It was chosen as a group classic read by my Goodreads Reading For Pleasure book club. Since I had both the kindle and Audible audiobook, for most of the book I did Immersion reading, which is reading the kindle version while listening to the audiobook at the same time. I continued the book until the beginning of December when health reasons caused me to put it aside until the middle of January. At no time did I consider not finishing the book. It's one of the most unique books that I have ever read. The book is made up of narratives as told by the various people involved in story as it would have been had they been called as witnesses in a court of law. The first and last narrator is Walter Hartright, the hero of the story. He saves his friend, Professor Pesca from drowning, leaving him forever in Walter's debt. In return Professor Pesca is delighted when he is able to recommend Walter for a situation as a drawing master for two young ladies, half sisters, Marian Holcombe and Laura Fairlie, at Limmeridge House in Cumberland. From his arrival at Limmeridge House until the end of the story, Walter's fate is intertwined with that of the two heroines of the story, Marian and Laura. But before his arrival at Limmeridge House, Walter Hartright has a chance meeting with a woman who has escaped from a madhouse, The Woman in White, Ann Catherick. Her fate too becomes intertwined with that of Walter Hartright, Marian Holcombe, and especially, Laura Fairlie. The author, Wilkie Collins, was a great friend of Charles Dickens who published his works in serialized form in a magazine owned by him. The Woman in White was his most successful novel and considered a "Sensation" novel. Today we would classify it in the suspense or thriller genre. The Woman in White is not a fast read because if you read it too fast you might miss something important to the story. There are unexpected twists and turns that you never see coming. I spent quite a bit of time trying to guess what lay behind the actions of the two main villains of the story. What secrets were they trying to hide and what motivated them to behave as they did. I fully intend to read more of Wilkie Collin's works. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: A review *by P***N on January 18, 2017* This is another of those books that I've long intended to read but somehow never got around to. My resolution for 2017 is to rectify some of that neglect. The Woman in White is in the grand tradition of the densely plotted Victorian novel. It is, in fact, downright Dickensian or Jamesian in its wordiness. Modern readers who have not been exposed to the circuitous descriptions and verbiage of such writers may falter over its 600+ pages. But lovers of the language may find themselves drooling, as I did, over its skillful use. The story starts with a young drawing master, Walter Hartwright, encountering a mysterious woman dressed all in white as he walks along a moonlit London road. The woman is in distress and asks for directions which Walter gives her and sends her on her way. Soon after, he hears a policeman asking if anyone has seen the woman, who, he says, has escaped from an asylum. Walter keeps quiet and the policeman's search is unsuccessful. Walter has been engaged to teach drawing to two young ladies at Limmeridge House in Cumberland; Laura Fairlie, fair, gentle, pretty, guileless orphan whose guardian is her uncle, the hypochondriac/narcissist Frederick Fairlie, and Marian Halcombe, Laura's elder half-sister and companion, dark, strong-willed, intelligent and resourceful. Over the next few months, Walter and Laura fall in love, but Laura has already been promised (by her deceased father) to Sir Percival Glyde, Baronet, and she is determined to honor that commitment. Marian, understanding the impossible situation, advises Walter to leave the country to get over Laura. With the help of a friend, he secures a position with an archaeological expedition headed to South America. Laura, much to her sorrow, marries Glyde. It is clear from the beginning that Glyde is a villain, although it isn't certain at first just what his villainy entails. When the honeymooners return from a trip to Italy, they have Count and Countess Fosco in tow. Count Fosco is Glyde's closest friend and his wife - surprise, surprise! - is Laura's aunt, who was estranged from the family over the matter of a bequest. It soon becomes clear that both Glyde and Fosco are "embarrassed" financially and their only hope of redeeming themselves is to call on Laura for a loan from her inheritance. Her husband attempts to pressure her into signing papers that would authorize the funds, but, with Marian supporting her, she refuses. How can the nefarious duo get the funds they need? Well, if Laura were dead... Collins' complicated plot over the next few hundred pages explicates very clearly the inequality in law of women and men at that time. A woman was under the control of her father or her guardian until she married and, once married, she was under the thumb of her husband. A married woman could hardly do anything without her husband's consent. She had little recourse in the courts of the time. Willie Collins was trained in the law and he understood this very well. He created a strong and empathetic female character in Marian Halcombe and yet, resourceful as she was, she had little hope of combating the villainous Glyde and Fosco without the manly assistance of Walter Hartwright. Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to this theme, having just completed reading The Bell Jar, but it seemed to me that this book could be read as a 19th century feminist treatise. Collins effectively uses the multiple narrator strategy of telling his story by offering witness statements from all of the principal characters, much as would happen in a court of law. In spite of its length, its complicated plot and its 19th century verbiage, this is a real page-turner of a book. I found it hard to put down and I could not wait to see where the twists and turns of the plot would take me next. As an early example of the mystery novel, with Walter Hartwright standing in as the everyman detective, this sets a high bar for later writers of such novels to reach. Indeed, this has been included on some lists of the greatest novels of all time, and I would not argue with that assessment. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.fr/products/1210383-the-woman-in-white](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/1210383-the-woman-in-white) --- *Product available on Desertcart France* *Store origin: FR* *Last updated: 2026-06-06*