Walking home late one night, drawing master Walter Hartright is stopped on a deserted road by a woman dressed entirely in white, fleeing in terror from something she will not name. It is the first thread in a conspiracy of stolen inheritance, secret asylums, and mistaken identity that will take years to unravel. Published in 1859 and devoured serially by an entire nation, The Woman in White is widely credited as the first true sensation novel and a direct ancestor of the modern mystery and psychological thriller — narrated by multiple witnesses, each holding only part of the truth. T. S. Eliot called it simply "the first, the longest, and the best" of its kind.
