Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Collins, Wilkie. THE WOMAN IN WHITE [three volumes, "New Edition"]. Sampson Low & Son: London, 1860.
Price: US$345.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 3 vols. 7.5 x 5", half leather; marbled boards, 316pp, 360pp; 368pp, covers quite worn, leather corners abraded, extremities bumped and scuffed, outer hinges starting (front cover of volume 3 is detached but present), spines dry and darkened with ends chipping, prelims spotted, endpapers with waterstaining along edges, former owner's ink inscription on top of each title page; a rather worn and fairly delicate set of the "New Edition", published in the same year as the First Edition through Seventh Editions. Still, SCARCE.
Seller: John K King Used & Rare Books, Detroit, MI, U.S.A.
Price: US$377.50 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: A three-volume hardcover edition, the three (smaller 8vo) volumes of the triple-decker -- half leather over marbled boards with spines divided into five panels -- matched and appearing identical from the exterior, though in fact a "mixed edition" with the first and third volumes identified to title pages as "Third Edition," while volume II calls itself a "Sixth Edition." (As all three volumes are "Sampson Low, Son, & Co, 47 Ludgate Hill, London 1860," we suspect third and sixth "printings" might be a more appropriate translation into the modern usage.) Topstains somewhat faded but appear to be violet. The second and third volumes are "very good" with modest rub to leather corners, first volume "good only" as it's missing the bottom panel of the spine covering. All three volumes printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street, London. "The Woman In White" is of course the sixth Haycraft-Queen cornerstone, added to that expanded list by Ellery Queen circa 1950. Collins' fifth novel, initially serialized 1859–60 in Charles Dickens' magazine "All the Year Round" and in "Harper's Weekly" in the U.S., was a pioneering work of detective fiction, and also an early use of the story told from multiple viewpoints, in the same manner a case might be developed in court by the testimony of various witnesses. Modern critics consider it Collins' best novel, as did the author. There were numerous radio, television and silent film adaptations. The best-remembered "talkie" was probably the 1948 Warner Brothers adaptation starring Gig Young, Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, and Sydney Greenstreet. i-viii, 1-316, 1-360, 1-368. Reduced from $500.
Seller: Cat's Curiosities, Pahrump, NV, U.S.A.
COLLINS, WILKIE. The Woman in White. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1860.
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: SCARCE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, FIRST STATE WITH THE FIRST ISSUE BINDING of one of the first and most influential detective novels. A beautiful copy. Note: We can find no other examples of the first issue with first state ads in public auction records. After the publication of The Woman in White William Wilkie Collins earned an international reputation as a master of his craft, a pioneer of detective writing and a creator of a new genre. Born in London in 1824, he was the son of a well-known landscape painter and a former governess. When he was twelve his family spent two years in Italy and France and Collins became fluent in French and Italian and learned more "among the scenery, the pictures, and the people, than I ever learned at school." His family returned to England when Collins was fourteen and as a boarding school student he told nightly stories to appease the dormitory bully. He later recalled that "it was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware.When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure." (Collins, The Legacy of Cain) Known as a novelist, Collins was also a playwright, a journalist and in 1851 was recruited as an actor for one of Charles Dickens's amateur theater productions. Impressed with Collins's writing, Dickens took him under his wing, later crediting Collins with helping him to craft more skillful and suspenseful plot structures in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1860-61). Their friendship proved to be one of the most important relationships of Collins's life. Collins became a regular contributor to Dickens's periodicals "Household Words" and "All the Year Round" and in 1856 Collins spent six weeks in Paris, living next door to Dickens and his family. During that time they visited theaters, music halls and book stalls where Collins found the records of French courtroom trials which inspired the plot of The Woman in White. In 1859 and 1860 The Woman in White was published in serialized form in Dickens's "All the Year Round" and concurrently in "Harper's Weekly." In mid-August of 1860 it was published in three volumes by London's Sampson Low, Son, & Co. and two weeks later in a single volume by Harper & Company in New York. This Harper's first American edition is considered more authentic because it follows the original "All the Year Round" text much more closely than the Sampson Low edition. In contrast to the significantly altered Sampson Low versions, Harper & Company reissued this edition for some years, retaining certain errors of chronology, including those pointed out by The New York Times and The Guardian. The American edition was illustrated by John McLenan, a noted caricaturist who produced images for novels by Collins and Dickens. Harper eventually revised and published a uniform edition of Collins's works on the occasion of his visit to America in 1873. (Gasson, "The Woman in White - A Chronological Study") Enthralling readers for generations, The Woman in White is a deviously plotted story of an affable art tutor, Walter Hartright, who encounters a lost woman, clad in all white, on the streets of London. He reports her to the authorities only to discover that she had escaped from an asylum. Later, Walter is hired as an art teacher for Laura, who looks stunningly similar to the woman in white he met previously. As Laura and Walter fall for one another, the mystery deepens and the story slowly unravels. The intricacies of the plot and the partial disclosures that are revealed are so engrossing that British Prime Minister William Gladstone once canceled an evening appointment to finish Collins's novel. (Luckhurst, "An introduction to The Woman in White") The Woman in White is a breathtaking narrative combining Gothic horror and psychological realism to create a new literary genre-sensational fiction-which profoundly changed the course of English popular writing. The success of Wilkie
Seller: Manhattan Rare Book Company, ABAA, ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.