The Woman in White

First English edition, mixed set. Post 8vo. 3 vols. Pp. viii, 316; [ii], 360; [ii], 368, [16 (adverts dated Nov 1, 1860)]. Original purple cloth, blocked in blind and gilt; pale-yellow endpapers. No half-titles, as issued. Preface dated August 3, 1860.

Set comprises the first two volumes of the sixth issue, or so-called 'Sixth Edition,' published by 1 November 1960, and the third volume of the so-called 'New Edition' – being the last of the three-volume issues – published on 1 November 1960. With binder's ticket of Bone & Son at rear pastedown of vol. 1 and signatures of Capt. Le Gendre [Nicholas] Starkie (1828–1899) of the 2nd Royal Lancashire Militia to endpapers of the first two volumes. He later served in the 5th Royal Lancashire Militia, being promoted to its command with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1879. A Liberal Party MP from 1853 to 1857 for the Lancashire borough of Clitheroe, Le Gendre Starkie inherited the Grade II listed Huntroyde Hall on the death of his synonymous father in 1865.

Frayed board edges, with some minor loss to sunned spines, bumped corners, hinges starting at pp. 72/3, 146/7, 240/1 of vol. i, likewise pp. 72/3, 264/5 and initial and terminal hinge seams of vol. ii, pages rough-cut in places, occasional foxing, else a clean, sound duo. Vol. iii shows scattered discolouration spots to front and inner edges of lower board, bumped corners, with brightly coloured purple covers and gilt intact on lightly sunned spine. Rare in any issue in original publisher's cloth.

Author's fifth published novel, it was begun on 15 August 1859 at the seaside resort of Broadstairs, Kent, and completed on July 26th 1860 at his rented rooms at 12 Harley Street, London. The English edition was published on or about 15 August 1860, priced at 31s 6d, as stated by Sampson Low in its 'List of Books for the month of August' in The Publishers' Circular of 1 August 1860, and contrary to Sadleir's assertion that the American edition precedes it by a month. In fact, the single volume Harper & Brothers US edition appeared no earlier than 30 August 1860 (adverts on which date by Harper's in both The New York Times and The World announce the book as 'Published this day'). Furthermore, in a letter to his mother, dated 22 August, 1860, Collins asserted that 'the whole of the first impression... sold on the day of publication'. By 1 November 1860, when the last 3 vol. issue was published, the so-called 'New Edition', there had already been seven issues in circulation. The first one-volume edition with the author's revised preface, dated February 1861, was published between 15 April and 1 May 1861, according to The Publishers' Circular of 1 May.

The title was originally serialized in 40 parts in Charles Dickens's weekly, All the Year Round (26 Nov 1859 – 25 Aug 1860), and concurrently in 42 parts in the US magazine Harper's Weekly (26 Nov 1859 – 8 Sep 1860). Textual changes, such as errors of punctuation, spelling and grammar abound between the All the Year Round serial publication and the first English, three-volume edition. A major chronological inconsistency, though, first described in the October 30, 1860 issue of The Times and 'rectified' in the 1861 first one volume edition only served to introduce further inconsistencies, as the novel's parallel narratives are so closely interwoven. While a minor, sequential discontinuity first noted in the August 29, 1860 review of The Guardian, was corrected by the book's so-called second edition of 15 September, a fortnight later.

A Haycraft-Queen mystery fiction cornerstone, and one of the great Victorian novels in any genre, The Woman in White established Collins's hold as "practically the first English novelist who dealt with the detection of crime" (Harvey, The Oxford Companion, p. 233). Centring on the theme of stolen identity and the misuse of lunatic asylums, the story is partly based on an eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment, taken from Maurice Méjan's Recueil des causes célèbres et des arrêts qui les ont décidées (1807). The innovative use of multiple narratives draws on Collins's legal background and as he points out in the novel's preamble: "the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness". Listed at no. 23 by The Observer in 2003, amongst "the top 100 greatest novels of all time".

[Parrish, pp. 39–40; Sadleir, 605a; Wolff, 1377]