Why a Booktrail?
1859: Who is the mysterious woman in white?
The Woman in White
What you need to know before your trail
Walter Hartright, who is on his way to take up a teaching post at the large Limmeridge house, encounters a strange woman dressed in all white on Hampstead Heath.
He soon discovers that the woman in question has escaped from a lunatic asylum and is wandering the woods asking questions about the family at Limmeridge House.
Walter is keen to know more about the woman whilst getting settled in his job but things get complicated when he falls in love with one of the sisters. Laura. But Laura is engaged to be married and her fiancee Sir Percival Glyde seems to harbour secrets of his own.
Travel Guide
England
London
Most of the locations in the book are fictional but London Hampstead is obviously real so take care when next walking the Heath incase the Woman in White sees and speaks to you! The TV version which starts on BBC tonight is was filmed in Ireland, in and around Dublin.
Limmeridge House – the Fairlie home is somewhere in the old county of Limmeridge House in Limmeridge, Cumberland. Cumberland is an historic region in North West England that existed from the 12th century until 1974. It was bordered by Northumberland to the east, and it forms part of Cumbria.
Limmeridge House is a beautiful place filled and there’s lots of gothic imagery:
“The view was such a surprise, and such a change to me, after my weary London experience of brick and mortar landscape, that I seemed to burst into a new life and a new set of thoughts the moment I looked at it.”
Hampshire
Sir Percival and Lady Glyde live at the huge Blackwater Park in Hampshire. It’s gothic and dreary:
“I discovered that good judges could only exercise their abilities on Sir Percival’s piece of antiquity by previously dismissing from their minds all fear of damp, darkness, and rats.”
London
Walter meets the woman in white in Hampstead heath when” The London air was its heaviest; the distant hum of the street traffic was at its faintest, the small pulse of the life within me and the great heart of the city around me seemed to be seeking in unison, languidly and more languidly, with the sinking sun.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Woman in White
Destination : London, England Author/Guide: Wilkie Collins Departure Time: 1800s
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