The Woman in White was originally serialized in Charles Dickens’s periodical All the Year Round from November 1859 to August 1860, and published in three volumes in 1860. The present text is that of the corrected “New Edition” of 1861.
Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
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The Woman in White
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-280-2
eISBN : 978-1-411-43353-3
ISBN-10: 1-59308-280-0
LC Control Number 2004112708
Produced and published in conjunction with: Fine Creative Media, Inc. 322 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President & Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
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WILKIE COLLINS
William Wilkie Collins was born in London on January 8, 1824, to William and Harriet Collins. William Collins was a landscape painter who gained financial security by courting aristocratic patronage; his strict Tory (conservative) political views would later contrast with the bohemianism and political progressiveness of his son. Young Wilkie found more in common with his free-spirited mother, whose family included several successful artists. Before her marriage, Harriet also painted and supported herself by teaching and working as a governess; she exhibited an independence of character that would inspire a number of Wilkie’s fictional heroines.
William was determined to provide his two sons every social opportunity: He sent them to private schools, and Wilkie’s childhood included extended travels in Europe and training in painting. After exhibiting landscape paintings at the Royal Academy and serving an apprenticeship at a tea-importing firm, Collins began writing; he published his first story, “The Last Stage Coachman,” in 1843. In response to increasing pressure from his ailing father to abandon writing, Collins studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. After his father died in 1847, Collins began to pursue writing as a career and never practiced law; however, his legal training served him well when he wrote the first English-language detective stories.
Collins met Charles Dickens in 1851, and their ensuing friendship proved personally and professionally fortuitous. Over the next decade, with Dickens as an active mentor and publisher of his work,. Collins wrote prolifically. In 1859 he met Caroline Graves, a widow, who remained, with some interruptions, his companion until his death. A simultaneous long-term affair with Martha Rudd earned him a scandalous reputation, even among open-minded literati. Collins’s unorthodox personal life did little to harm his literary success. Over the course of his career, he published more than twenty-six novels, including The Woman in White (1860), which made him one of Britain’s most popular writers; the other novels Basil (1852), No Name (1862), and The Moonstone (1868); and countless stories, articles, plays, and essays.
Productive until his final years, Wilkie Collins suffered from increasing ill health and laudanum addiction until his death on September 23, 1889. Although some of his work is perhaps overtly didactic in dealing with difficult social issues, Collins’s writings are extremely varied and provide remarkable prototypes for the femme fatale and the modern detective novel.
THE WORLD OF WILKIE COLLINS AND THE WOMAN IN WHITE
1824
William Wilkie Collins is born in London on January 8 to William and Harriet Collins. His father is a Royal Academy landscape artist with Tory (conservative) political leanings.
1828
Wilkie’s brother, Charles Allston Collins, is born.
1832
Britain’s first Reform Bill almost doubles the number of voters, mostly members of the middle class.
1833
The British Factory Act is passed, prohibiting the employment of children under age nine and introducing factory inspections. Slavery is outlawed in the British Empire.
1835
Wilkie and his brother attend the Maida Hill Academy.
1836- 1838
The Collins family lives in France, Germany, and Italy. Wilkie refines his painting skills by studying the work of the old masters in Rome.
1837
The People’s Charter, a British working-class movement, is founded; the struggle for universal suffrage begins. Victoria becomes queen.
1838
Wilkie attends Reverend Henry Cole’s school. Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist is published. The National Gallery opens in London.
1839
The Opium War breaks out between Britain and China.
1841
Collins becomes an apprentice at the tea-importing firm of Antrobus and Company.
1842
Collins begins writing. He travels to Scotland with his father. Factory workers strike in Manchester and other British industrial cities.
1843
Wordsworth becomes poet laureate. Collins’s first story, “The Last Stage Coachman,” appears in the Illuminated Magazine.
1844
Collins and his friend Charles Ward travel to Paris. John Stuart Mill’s Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy is published. J. M.
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