Mystery · Thriller
The Woman in White
A drawing teacher meets a frightened woman in white on a moonlit road, and a conspiracy begins to unfold.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A meeting on the road
Walter Hartright, a young drawing teacher, is walking home to London late one summer night when a hand touches his shoulder. A woman dressed all in white asks him the way. She is frightened and strange, and she asks about the people of Limmeridge House in Cumberland, where Walter is about to start work. Soon after they part, two men in a carriage stop a policeman: they are looking for a woman who has escaped from an asylum. At Limmeridge Walter meets his pupils, gentle Laura Fairlie and her clever, devoted half-sister, Marian Halcombe, and notices that Laura looks uncannily like the woman in white. It began appearing in 1859 in All the Year Round, the magazine Charles Dickens edited.
Why it works for learners
Like evidence at a trial, the story is told by witnesses in turn, each writing what they know. Some of the voices are wonderful: Marian’s diary, the self-pitying invalid Mr Fairlie, and the villain, Count Fosco, fat, charming and terrifying, with his canaries and white mice. The variety of styles keeps a long book lively and gives you practice in very different registers. The suspense is real, and the plot turns on concrete things that are easy to follow: letters, dates, documents, identities.
Which level to start at
B2 is the best fit. The plot is intricate, and the pleasure of the narrators’ voices needs room. B1 gives you the mystery in clear form. At C1 and C2 you’ll enjoy Collins’s full, leisurely style; the novel is long, and the C2 edition is all of it. Each witness gets a distinct voice in Lexo’s narration, which makes the handovers easy to follow.
Read next
- The Moonstone, Collins’s diamond mystery
- Jane Eyre, another young teacher in a house of secrets
- Dracula, another story told through diaries and letters