Publisher's Synopsis
A Charles Dickens's protege, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)--sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of English detective fiction"--is credited with the first great mystery novel, The Woman in White. The story is sometimes considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narrators draws on Collins's legal training. Walter Hartright, a young art teacher, meets a mysterious and distressed woman dressed in white. He helps her on her way, but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. Next day, he travels to Limmeridge House in Cumberland, having been hired as a drawing master on the recommendation of his friend, Pesca, an Italian language master. The Limmeridge household comprises the invalid Frederick Fairlie, and Walter's students: Laura Fairlie, Mr Fairlie's niece, and Marian Halcombe, her devoted half-sister. Walter realises that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, who is known to the household and whose name is Anne Catherick. The mentally disabled Anne had lived near Limmeridge as a child and was devoted to Laura's mother, who first dressed her in white. Was Count Fosco later to become Hercule Poirot? extract from the book..... "With that woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world. With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience--I, Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times--I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells!." We do know that Wilkie Collins novel, The Woman in White was one book Agatha Christie read. After you have read through, you will recognise some elements in later Agatha Christie books and characters.
