The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins — a book for the night: the opening, the author and a London trail

A November evening with fog at the window is the right time for a book that itself begins in fog. «The Woman in White» by Wilkie Collins (1859) is reckoned one of the first English detective novels and the most famous «sensation novel» of the Victorian age. It all starts with a single night-time meeting: a young drawing master walking into London along an empty road suddenly sees a woman dressed from head to foot in white. She appears as if from nowhere, asks for help, and is gone. Who she is, what she is fleeing, and why she so resembles the young mistress of the great house where he is going to work — on this Collins holds the reader for five hundred pages. It is a book about substituted identities, locked-up secrets, and how hard it is to prove the truth when your enemy is a charming, unhurried villain.

The opening: how it all begins

The novel opens with a line that sets up the whole book. In the original:

ADV · A003We build websites for tradespeople and sole traders — £219Customers see your work and prices and message you straight away. Ready in 3 days, £219 instead of £438.Advertise here

«This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.»

Our Russian rendering is published on the Russian page; here is the English as printed. And this is the scene the book is remembered for — the woman in white appearing on an empty night road: «There, in the middle of the broad bright high-road—there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments…»

Text quoted from the edition published on Project Gutenberg. The full English text is free and legal: Project Gutenberg, eBook #583.

Why it is worth reading tonight

«The Woman in White» is often called the first English novel of real detection: the characters gather evidence, cross-check dates and testimony, and reconstruct the picture piece by piece, long before real detectives did. But it is not only the mystery that holds you. Collins tells the story through several witnesses — diaries, letters, statements — and each sees only a part of the truth; assembling the whole is left to the reader. Hence the signature tension: you always know a little more than some characters and a little less than others. And it has one of the great villains of Victorian fiction — the stout, courteous Count Fosco, lover of canaries and white mice. The first chapter is short, about fifteen minutes: the narrator takes a post as a drawing master, not yet suspecting that a chance meeting on the road to London will bind him for years. How it ends, and who the woman in white turns out to be, you will find out for yourself.

About the author

William Wilkie Collins was born on 8 January 1824 in London and died on 23 September 1889 — more than seventy years ago, so his text is now in the public domain. Three things worth knowing. First, he was a close friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens: «The Woman in White» was first serialised in Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round from 26 November 1859 to 25 August 1860 and made Collins famous overnight. Second, Collins effectively created the English detective novel: his «The Moonstone» (1868) was later called by T. S. Eliot the first and best of English detective novels. Third, Collins suffered lifelong from severe gout and took laudanum — a tincture of opium — in doses that astonished his doctors; some of his later books were written under its influence.

ONLYWAY NEWSLIVEImmigration · 03.11How to get a National Insurance number in Britain in 2026Books · 03.11The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins — a book for the night: the opening, the author and a London trailLife · 03.11Provisional licence in 2026: how to get a learner’s driving licence and what it costsHousing · 03.11Shared Ownership in 2026: how to buy a share of a home and gradually buy it outrightMoney · 03.11Winter Fuel Payment for winter 2026 to 2027: who gets up to £300 for heatingMoney · 03.11Help to Save in 2026: the state adds 50% to savings for people on a low incomeLaw · 03.11Probate in 2026: how to get the right to deal with an estate and what the fee isLaw · 03.11Advance decision (living will) in 2026: how to refuse unwanted treatment in advanceMoney · 03.11Carrying £10,000 across the border: when you must declare cashTravel · 03.11International Driving Permit (IDP) in 2026: when Britons need one abroad and where to get it for £5.50ONLYWAY NEWS · appInstall the ONLYWAY NEWS appFresh UK news, classifieds, key dates and exchange rates on your home screen, one tap away. Free.NewsClassifiedsCalendarRates

A trail through the places

Collins is a London writer, and his places sit close together in the north-west of the city. All checked today.

Hampstead Heath (north London). The novel opens with the narrator walking back from Hampstead into town at night — it is on the road down from these hills that he meets the woman in white. The Heath itself is a vast open park managed by the City of London Corporation; entry is free and you can walk it from dawn to dusk. Come at dusk, when the mist the book describes rises over the ponds.

65 Gloucester Place, Marylebone (W1U 8JL). The house where Collins lived for more than twenty years and wrote many of his books; an English Heritage blue plaque, put up back in 1951, is on the front. It is an ordinary residential street: the plaque is visible from the pavement at any time, free and with no entry needed.

Kensal Green Cemetery (Harrow Road, W10 4RA) — where Collins is buried. The gates are open daily roughly 09:00–17:00 and walking the cemetery is free. On Sundays the Friends of Kensal Green run guided tours: meet at 14:00 on the steps of the Anglican Chapel, £12, concessions £10, booking essential (from November to February tours run only on the first and third Sunday of the month).

Where to get it

Free. The full English text is in the public domain: Project Gutenberg, eBook #583. To see which British libraries hold it, use the Library Hub Discover catalogue.

Buy it. English paperbacks of «The Woman in White» are widely stocked by ordinary British bookshops. For a Russian translation, search «Женщина в белом» at the UK Russian bookshops Notre Locus and Bookashka; we do not quote today’s stock or price here — check the shop’s own site.