"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:" Thus young Walter Hartright first meets the mysterious woman in white in what soon became one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century. An instant success when it first appeared in 1860, this mystery thriller has continued to enthrall readers ever since. Secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and asylums, an unorthodox villain, and the breath taking tension of Collins's narrative created the ne literary genre of suspense Fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing.