Sir Percival Glyde, Laura’s husband, has been burned to death while destroying key evidence that would disinherit him. But Sir Percy is onto Hartright, and the race to acquire the necessary proof is joined – with tragic consequences. Walter Hartright, hot on the trail of the villainous Count Fosco and his accomplice Sir Percival Glyde, discovers compelling evidence why the latter shut up both Anne Catherick, The Woman In White and his own wife Laura in an asylum. His search takes him to a small village in Hampshire, where there have clearly been some questionable goings-on… Walter Hartright continues to investigate why Lady Laura Glyde was shut up in an asylum, and where Anne Catherick, The Woman In White, has disappeared to. Now at liberty she helps Walter Hartright in his quest to re-establish her identity, and to retrieve her considerable fortune, which has passed to her husband, Sir Percival Glyde, and his oily accomplice, the corpulent Count Fosco. Laura Glyde has been freed by her sister Marian from an asylum, into which she was admitted under the name of Anne Catherick, who we now know to be The Woman In White. Walter abandons England to try and forget her – yet he cannot, and returns to find her dead. Walter Hartright and Laura Fairlie have fallen in love with one another, but Laura is already engaged to Sir Percival Glyde, a much older aristocrat. The elder, Marian is fun but frumpy while the younger, Laura, bears a startling resemblance to – the Woman In White. Walter Hartright has taken up a new job in Cumberland, teaching two well-born young ladies to draw. However, his life is turned completely upside down when he encounters the Woman In White, wandering forlornly on a deserted midnight street… Walter Hartright, a drawing instructor, is down on his luck and looking for a change. “The Woman In White” has lost none of its power to shock, startle and entertain after almost 150 years. The meeting unleashes a chain of startling events that encompasses espionage, fraud, conflagration, body-swapping, drugs, forgery and murder – quite a heady cocktail of vices for its mid-Victorian audience.ĭescribed as the first detective novel in the English language, the book was a best-seller from the moment of its publication in 1860 – a popularity which continues to the present day in the form of the recent Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation which opened in London with Michael Crawford taking the role of the corpulent villain, Count Fosco. The life of art teacher Walter Hartright changes forever following his midnight encounter with the spectral ‘Woman In White’ on a lonely moonlit road. Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2005/6ĭougray Scott reads Wilkie Collins’ celebrated novel “The Woman In White”, in this abridged eight part version originally broadcast by BBC Radio 2.

The woman in white audiobook