Tag Archives: Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins’ classic “The Woman in White” is delivered by PBS Distribution

We have loved the works of Wilkie Collins ever since we discovered him years ago. We were excited when we found out that PBS Distribution will release the DVD The Woman in White, based on his 19th century mystery novel , on November 6. This five-part screen adaptation brings to life the secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and asylums, that made this mystery thriller an instant success when it was published in 1868.

The program begins when Walter Hartright (played by Ben Hardy), a young drawing master, encounters a spectral woman dressed all in white on a moonlit road on Hampstead Heath. After offering his assistance to the strange woman, he is shocked to discover that she has just escaped from a nearby insane asylum. The encounter draws him into a web of mystery and deception that transforms his life forever.

Shortly afterwards, Walter takes up a teaching position in the Cumbrian village of Limmeridge. There, he meets his pupils-–the clever, bold Marian Halcombe (Jessie Buckley), and the beautiful, sweet-natured Laura Fairlie (Olivia Vinall). Walter notices that Laura bears an uncanny resemblance to the mysterious woman in white, who was known to the household as Anne Catherick (also Olivia Vinall): a mentally disabled child who grew up in the village. Over the next few months, Walter and Laura fall deeply in love. However, she is promised in marriage to Sir Percival Glyde (Dougray Scott), a charming local Baronet with a secret he will do anything to protect.

Soon after the wedding, Glyde’s true cruel nature begins to emerge. Conspiring with his companion, the compelling and Machiavellian Count Fosco, he enacts a terrible plan to access his new wife’s considerable fortune. Marian and Walter toil to rescue Laura and expose the unscrupulous, scheming masterminds and their twisted conspiracy.

FYI: For those who have npot heard of Collins, look him up. His books are public domain. The Woman in White  is widely considered to be among the first mystery novels; written in 1859, it was considered a commercial success and cultural sensation at the time.

Clue for a great 2017 read: “Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes”

Want to start the New Year off with an exciting new chapter in your reading? It’s elementary dear readers.

In Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes (Bloomsbury, $27), acclaimed author Michael Sims traces Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s circuitous path to becoming the father of the modern mystery. Follow Doyle’s early days in Edinburgh surrounded by poverty and violence, through his escape to university to study medicine, his first several years of limited success in both medicine and writing, and finally, the emergence of the character of Sherlock Holmes, in Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet.

Sims deftly shows Holmes to be a product of Doyle’s varied adventures in his personal and professional life, as well as built out of the traditions of writers Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Émile Gaboriau and (one of our faves, and still so underrated!) Wilkie Collins—not just a skillful translator of clues, but a veritable superhero of the mind, reminiscent of Doyle’s esteemed teacher, Dr. Joseph Bell.

Sir Arthur . . . penning another Sherlock saga?

As a young medical student, Doyle studied under Dr. Bell, a veritable diagnostic genius and Doyle’s favorite professor. Bell could often identify a patient’s occupation, hometown, and ailments from the smallest details of dress, gait, and speech. Although Doyle was training to be a surgeon, he was impressed and inspired by Bell’s detective-like abilities, which laid the groundwork for Doyle’s creation of Holmes several years later. Filled with details that will surprise even the most knowledgeable Sherlockian, Arthur and Sherlock is a literary genesis story for detective fans everywhere.