书名：The Woman in White白衣女人
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1100L
作者：Wilkie Collins威尔基•柯林斯
出版社名称：HarperCollins
出版时间：2011
语种：英文 
ISBN：9780007902217
商品尺寸：11.1 x 5.1 x 17.8 cm
包装：简装
页数：756 （以实物为准）

The Woman in White《白衣女人》是十九世纪英国著名悬念小说家威尔基•柯林斯的代表作之一，被视为侦探小说的经典之作。这部作品不仅在整体布局以及悬念设置上精细无比，在叙事手法上也是另辟蹊径，采用了多重的叙事视角，与众不同，为作者开创了写侦探小说的先河，也为英国文学另辟了一条新的蹊径。
本书为HarperCollins推出的英文版，为柯林斯经典系列（Collins Classics），含历史背景及作者介绍（Life & Times），后附英语词汇注释（Glossary of Classic Literature），生词表采用《柯林斯英语词典》的解释，有助于读者学习理解。
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.
“The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.”
One of the earliest works of ‘detective’ fiction with a narrative woven together from multiple characters, Wilkie Collins partly based his infamous novel on a real-life eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. In 1859, the story caused a sensation with its readers, hooking their attention with the ghostly first scene where the mysterious ‘Woman in White’ Anne Catherick comes across Walter Hartright. Chilling, suspenseful and tense in mood, the novel remains as emotive for its readers today as when it was first published.
Features:
·Life & Times—a fascinating insight into the author, their work and the time of publication
·Glossary of Classic Literature—useful words and phrases at your fingertips, taken from Collins English Dictionary

青年画家哈特赖特应聘去费尔利家当家庭教师，路上邂逅一个身穿白衣的女人，从谈话中得知她是从疯人院里逃出来的，出于同情，他帮她躲过了追踪她的人。哈特赖特发现，自己的女学生劳娜很像那个白衣女人。劳娜的父亲临终前将女儿许配给了帕西瓦尔爵士，但是，爵士看中的只是她的巨额财产。他与意大利的秘密革命团体中的一个叛徒福克斯合谋，害死了知道真相的白衣女人，并把她的尸体当作劳娜下葬，又把劳娜当作白衣女人送回疯人院，劳娜于惊吓之下患上失忆症。与劳娜真心相爱的哈特赖特挺身而出，开始了营救劳娜、揭穿帕西瓦尔阴谋诡计的行动……
Walter Hartright, a drawing instructor, comes to Limmeridge House to teach Laura and Marion Halcombe. He falls in love with Laura, but she is betrothed to someone else, and he must therefore leave Limmeridge. Before he goes, he tells Marian about his encounter with a beautiful woman dressed entirely in white, whom he later discovers escaped from an insane asylum. Here the mystery begins: Who is the woman in white? And is she truly insane?

威尔基·柯林斯是英国文学史上首位侦探小说作家，出生于英国伦敦。他12岁随父母移居意大利，15岁回英国伦敦学习法律，并成为一名律师。1847年，柯林斯开始了他所热爱的文学创作，受到当时英国大作家狄更斯的赏识。柯林斯一生创作颇丰，不少作品都发表在维多利亚时代非常风行的杂志《家常话》上，重要作品有《月亮宝石》《白衣女人》《新济良所》《一个流浪汉的一生》等。
William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and more than 100 essays. His best-known works are The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT
(of Clement’s Inn, Teacher of Drawing)
This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice.
But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place. As the Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance of importance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related on hearsay evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spoken before them.
Thus, 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--with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with
them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word.
Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eight years, be heard first.