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Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Level 7: The Woman in White (ELT Graded Reader)

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reading series for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign language. 
 
- Carefully adapted text. 
 
- Accompanying audio and digital version with the print edition, accessed securely online. 
 
- The series includes popular classics, bestselling modern fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
- The eight levels of Penguin Readers are mapped to the CEFR, and Lexile measured. 
 
- Beautiful new illustrations for levels 2 to 6. Starter and level 1 titles in graphic-novel format, for beginner learners. 
 
- Language practice exercises and a glossary in every book, additional activities and lesson plans online. 
 
- Visit the Penguin Readers website: www.penguinreaders.co.uk 
 
The Woman in White, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework. 
 
One night when Walter Hartwright is walking home, he meets and helps the mysterious 'woman in white'. Soon after this meeting, Walter starts a job as a drawing teacher in the north of England and falls in love with his student, Laura Fairlie. But Laura is engaged to Sir Percival Glyde. Then Laura receives a letter warning her not to marry Glyde. Walter is sure that the letter comes from the woman in white...

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. His best-known works are The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868), considered the first modern English detective novel.

Penguin Readers introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The Woman in White, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework. One night when Walter Hartwright is walking home, he meets and helps the mysterious 'woman in white'. Soon after this meeting, Walter starts a job as a drawing teacher in the north of England and falls in love with his student, Laura Fairlie. But Laura is engaged to Sir Percival Glyde. Then Laura receives a letter warning her not to marry Glyde. Walter is sure that the letter comes from the woman in white...

Four BBC Radio 4 crime dramatisations

The Lady Detectives

A series of BBC Radio short stories, comprising of classic and period dramas featuring four female sleuths to rival Sherlock Holmes himself.

Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824. His father was the landscape painter William Collins. After school he worked for a tea merchant before studying to become a lawyer. In 1848 he published a biography of his father and his first novel, Antonina, followed in 1850. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens who would later edit and publish some of his novels. Collins's novels were extremely popular in his own time as well as now. The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868) are his best known works. Collins was linked with two women (one of whom bore him three children) but he never married. He died on 23 September 1889.

A series of BBC Radio short stories, comprising of classic and period dramas featuring four female sleuths to rival Sherlock Holmes himself. 
 
The Redhill Sisterhood by Catherine Louisa Pirkis 
Autumn,1897. Victorian undercover agent Loveday Brooke investigates some suspicious nuns who appear to have forsaken their vows – and turned to burglary. 
 
Mr Bovey’s Unexpected Will by LT Meade and Robert Eustace 
Brilliant, beautiful Miss Florence Cusack is one of Victorian London’s most respected consulting detectives. Here, she investigates the extraordinary case of a man whose fate depends on his weight in gold. 
 
The Golden Slipper by Anna Katharine Green 
Vivacious debutante Violet Strange sparkles in New York society – but leads a secret life as a professional agency detective. In this case from 1910, she investigates 'The Inseparables', four wealthy young women suspected of a series of thefts. 
 
The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins 
In this sensational Gothic tale from the author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, new bride Valeria Woodville sets out to clear her husband of murdering his first wife. 
 
Starring Gayanne Potter as Loveday Brooke, Elizabeth Conboy as Florence Cusack, Teresa Gallagher as Violet Strange and Abigail Docherty as Valeria Woodville.

The Woman in White

'The most popular novel of the nineteenth century, and still one of the best plots in English literature' Sarah Waters

The most popular novel of the 19th century, and still one of the best plots in English literature. Notable for its marvellous villains and, like all Collins's work, for its complex, spirited and believable female characters

The various women of the book - in white and otherwise - are wonderfully real

To Mr Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into ficiton those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors

The Woman in White...is a stay-up-all-night page-turner from 1859 that rivals any thriller written since

Jennifer Egan, author of A VISIT FROM GOON SQUAD

Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824. His father was the landscape painter William Collins. After school he worked for a tea merchant before studying to become a lawyer. In 1848 he published a biography of his father and his first novel, Antonina, followed in 1850. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens who would later edit and publish some of his novels. Collins's novels were extremely popular in his own time as well as now. The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868) are his best known works. Collins was linked with two women (one of whom bore him three children) but he never married. He died on 23 September 1889.

'The most popular novel of the nineteenth century, and still one of the best plots in English literature' Sarah Waters 
 
 Marian and her sister Laura live a quiet life under their uncle's guardianship until Laura's marriage to Sir Percival Glyde. Sir Percival is a man of many secrets – is one of them connected to the strange appearances of a young woman dressed all in white? And what does his charismatic friend, Count Fosco, with his pet white mice running in and out of his brightly coloured waistcoat, have to do with it all? Marian and the girls' drawing master, Walter, have to turn detective in order to work out what is going on, and to protect Laura from a fatal plot . . .

The Moonstone

'The first...and the best of modern English detective novels' T. S. Eliot

A whodunit about a lost jewel with several different narrators 'the first English detective story' is so ingenious, so melodramatically rational, so druggy and glittery and cleverly elusive, that it triumphs over all its impersonators

A great, bold, theatrical mystery story which never falters, written with huge confidence and style

Wilkie Collins, along with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens is generally acknowledged to be the great-great-grandfather of the modern mystery, but it's hard to think of many modern mysteries as skillfully shaped and psychologically keen as this one. The story flirts with the conventions of Victorian melodrama, but the characters that people it are truly vivid

No wonder 21st-century novelists are influenced by the great Victorian serial writers with their rip-roaring plots. A twisting detective thriller

The Moonstone is the first detective yarn with, in Sergeant Cuff, the original maverick detective

Wilkie Collins (Author) Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824. His father was the landscape painter William Collins. After school he worked for a tea merchant before studying to become a lawyer. In 1848 he published a biography of his father and his first novel, Antonina, followed in 1850. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens who would later edit and publish some of his novels. Collins's novels were extremely popular in his own time as well as now. The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868) are his best known works. Collins was linked with two women (one of whom bore him three children) but he never married. He died on 23 September 1889. Audrey Niffenegger (Introducer) Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and writer who lives mostly in Chicago and occasionally in London. She has published six books, including the novels The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry. She helped to found the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. Her art has been exhibited by Printworks Gallery in Chicago since 1986. She is a Professor in the Fiction Department of Columbia College. Her recent projects include a ballet, Raven Girl, in collaboration with Wayne McGregor for the Royal Opera House Ballet.

'The first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels' T S Eliot 
 
When Rachel Verinder receives a gift of an astonishing yellow diamond from her bitter old uncle for her eighteenth birthday, she has no idea that the stone brings great danger with it. When the diamond goes missing during the night the ensuing investigations gradually bring to light the sinister history of the jewel and the passions and plots of those close to Rachel. 
 
 
'Probably the very finest detective story ever written' Dorothy L. Sayers 
 
**AS DISCUSSED ON BBC2'S BETWEEN THE COVERS**

No Name

'A very good thriller...I enjoyed it immensely' William Trevor, Guardian

Magdalen, a woman who resists the Victorian idea of the angel in the house and proves to be unscrupulous in her fight for survival against poverty and prejudice, employing disguise and deceit to win back what she believes is rightfully hers

Dizzyingly readable, with a feminist anti-heroine up to all sorts of deception and skulduggery, cheered along by the reader every step of the way

Two dispossessed sisters fight for their inheritance, the narrative snaking compellingly around Victorian Britain

Collins explores the iniquity of Victorian morality by damning the future of his resourceful heroine at an early stage with the discovery of her own illegitimacy. Deprived of her inheritance and even her name, Magdalen Vanstone sets out with frightening courage to reestablish her fortune and reputation. The ingenuity and guile she employs to achieve her end makes her a rare figure in Victorian literature and one of Collins' most subversive characters

'A masterpiece' The Times 
 
After the tragic deaths of their parents, Magdalen and Norah discover the devastating news that they are both illegitimate and not entitled to any inheritance. Norah is forced to become a governess to earn her keep but Magdalen has grander plans and embarks on an elaborate scheme of revenge against her cold-hearted relatives. 
 
INCLUDES 'MRS ZANT AND THE GHOST'

The Haunted Hotel

An enigmatic countess with a wicked past, a terrible crime, a shadowy Venetian palazzo and a grisly apparition demanding vengeance - all the ingredients for a vintage Gothic horror tale.

Alchemy, premonitions, disappearances, madness, supernatural sightings and even a whiff of incest combine...a pleasingly nasty affair

An atmospheric and ghostly evocation of a wintry Venice in the 1800s

Wilkie Collins is the finest practitioner of the novel of sensation... he took the elements gothic fiction relied upon - secret lives, lovers, villainy - and moved them into the suburbs... here the genre fused with the already established crime novel and took it in a new direction, more familiar and more frightening

Wilkie Collins [drew] on the conventions of blood and thunder melodrama but subtly let the reader know he's having fun with the game

An enjoyable 19th century read following doomed happenings and grisly, secret premonitions. 
 
 An eminent doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane? 
 
When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered. 
 
In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies. 
 
How are these little mysteries connected? Spend the night in Room 14 of Venice’s finest hotel, and find out the truth – if you dare… 
 
INCLUDES THE GHOST STORY ‘THE DREAM WOMAN’

Wilkie Collins

Harry Lloyd

John Sharp

Full Cast

Abigail Docherty

Sophie Thompson

Toby Stephens

David Suchet

Marcia Warren

Ronald Pickup

Dramatisations and readings of his sensational stories including The Woman in White & The Moonstone

BBC radio productions of the finest works of Wilkie Collins: sensation novelist, early master of the mystery story, and pioneer of detective fiction 
 
Wilkie Collins was one of Victorian England's best-loved and best-selling authors, and a crime fiction pioneer. His enthralling 'sensation novels' such as The Woman in White paved the way for today's thrillers, and his tour de force The Moonstone is one of the first, and greatest, modern detective stories. 
 
This collection features dramatisations of these two masterpieces, with star casts including Toby Stephens (The Woman in White) and John Sharp (The Moonstone). Also included are adaptations of three of Collins' other major novels: No Name, The Law and the Lady and The Haunted Hotel, starring Sophie Thompson, Abigail Docherty and Henry Lloyd respectively. 
 
Collins was a prolific short story writer, and included here are a number of his shorter tales, such as a full-cast dramatisation of the ghost story 'Mad Monkton', starring Gary Bond, and readings of five tales of suspense: 'The Dream Woman' (read by David Suchet), 'The Biter Bit' (read by John Rowe), 'A Terribly Strange Bed' (read by Paul Daneman), 'The Stolen Letter' (read by Garard Green) and 'The Dead Hand' (read by Peter Marinker). Plus, the darkly comic 'Mrs Badgery' is read by Christopher Harper, while Ronald Pickup reads the murder mystery 'Who Killed Zebedee?', taken from the 1887 short story collection Little Novels. There are also dramatisations of five additional Little Novels tales: 'Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman', 'Mr Marmaduke and the Minister', 'Miss Bertha and the Yankee', 'Miss Morris and the Stranger' and 'Mr Percy and the Prophet', all starring Ronald Pickup as Wilkie Collins. 
 
A lifelong friend of Charles Dickens, Collins collaborated with him on several works including 'A House to Let', which was co-written by Collins, Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Proctor. Marcia Warren stars in an adaptation of this exciting tale of secrets and intrigue. 
 
Finally, in Night Waves: The Woman in White, Matthew Sweet joins Simon Callow, Kate Summerscale, Paul Lewis and Lisa Appignanesi to discuss the groundbreaking novel that catapulted Collins to literary stardom, exploring its lasting influence and asking how it stands up today. 
 
 
Contents 
1. The Woman in White 
2. No Name 
3. The Moonstone 
4. The Law and the Lady 
5. The Haunted Hotel 
6. 'Mad Monkton' 
7. 'The Dream Woman' 
8. 'The Biter Bit' 
9. 'A Terribly Strange Bed' 
10. 'The Stolen Letter' 
11. 'The Dead Hand' 
12. 'Mrs Badgery' 
13. 'A House to Let' 
14. 'Who Killed Zebedee?' 
15. 'Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman' 
16. 'Mr Marmaduke and the Minister' 
17. 'Miss Bertha and the Yankee' 
18. 'Miss Morris and the Stranger' 
19. 'Mr Percy and the Prophet' 
20. 'Night Waves: The Woman in White' 
 
 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

The Wilkie Collins BBC Radio Collection

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Horror stories to listen to with the lights on

8 classic and chilling tales

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