The Woman in White

«The Woman in White» begins with a terrifying encounter of Walter Hartright with a mysterious woman dressed in white on a moonlit London road. Walter gets a position as a drawing teacher at the Fairlie estate; it seems that nothing could happen, but Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his «charming» friend, Count Fosco, a lover of white mice, vanilla candies, and poison. Madness roams the corridors of English country and insane asylums... This work is the first representative of the Victorian novel with elements of Gothic, romanticism, and psychological realism. Another great novel by Collins is «The Moonstone», which is often called the best detective story ever written, but it was the story of «The Woman in White» that so captivated Wilkie Collins's imagination that he requested to have inscribed on his tombstone: «Author of The Woman in White and other writings».