![]() ![]() For all of these productions Wilkie Collins tweaked and supplemented the text. ![]() The success of the novel led to further editions and printings in America, Australia, France, and Germany. Its initial printing of 1,000 copies sold out on the first day, despite a relatively high cost of 31s 6d. It then appeared in what (at that time) was a conventional three-volume format, published by Sampson Low, and was an immediate success. The novel ran between November 1859 and August 1860, and enormously increased sales of the newspaper. The Woman in White first appeared as a serial in All the Year Round, the weekly newspaper owned and edited by Charles Dickens. And, it should be noted – it was structured and related by a multiplicity of narrative voices in a remarkably successful manner. It was also tightly plotted and intricately organised in a manner that makes powerful intellectual demands on the reader. It was a ‘sensation novel’ or a ‘novel with a secret’ as they came to be known. The publication introduced two new elements into the novel genre. It was so popular that manufacturers produced Woman in White perfumes and clothing, and proposals of marriage were made to the courageous (but fictitious) heroine Marian Halcombe. It not only sold in thousands of copies but also created what we would now call a ‘franchise boom’. The Woman in White (1861) was one of the best-selling novels of the nineteenth century. Tutorial, commentary, study resources, further reading ![]()
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