reminding you that book group will reassemble come Fall. I send a reminder out today
as our first selection, The Woman in White, is over 600 pages long.
Our inter-library book group copies will be available the end of August. Until then,
A Woman in White is offered as a free download from Project Gutenberg and also Google Books. The Google Books versionis digitized and the most interesting.
The 1893 version is available here:
books.google.com/books?id=1UQa1VLdyqUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
And - the CIDLibrary offers Hoopla (free ebooks, audiobooks, movies) -- check out
the Woman in White digital possibilities here (requires a CIDL library card):
www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=woman%20in%20white
has never been out of print! Victorian readers were fans of Charles Dicken's weekly
magazine "All the Year Round," where stories were serialized. After the concluding installment
of "A Tale of Two Cities" this novel was offered, The Woman in White, ushering in a new
world of "sensation fiction" - a genre known for its suspenseful plots and themes of intrigue,
jealousy, murder.....
People lined up to purchase the next installment of the story. Conversations were ignited
as to speculation, what would happen next. "Manufacturers produced Women in White
perfume, Woman in White cloaks and bonnets, and music-shops displayed Women in White
waltzes and quadrilles. The poet Edward FitzGerald named her herring-lugger
"Marian Halcombe"; cats were named Fosco and thought to look more sinister; and
Walter became a fashionable name for babies." (The Guardian, The Woman in White's 150
Yeas of Sensation, November 2009)
Wilkie Collins was 35 years old. His story was serialized from November 1859 to August 1860; and
afterwards available in book form. The reading public loved this novel, the circulation levels
were higher than Dickens serialized novels. Collins was the master of the "cliff-hanger"
and he used this literary device over 40 times in this story. Collins once said "...the
primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story..."
By the way....a herring lugger is a boat!