The Woman in White · Chapter
Preface to the Present Edition explained
The author acknowledges the public's favorable reception of The Woman in White and explains that this new edition has been carefully corrected and revised.
What happens
The author acknowledges the public's favorable reception of The Woman in White and explains that this new edition has been carefully corrected and revised. He notes that technical errors have been rectified and that legal points were verified by an experienced solicitor, later confirmed as sound by judicial authority. He expresses gratitude to readers and reaffirms his literary principle that a novel's primary object is to tell a story, with character interest being essential to effective storytelling.
Themes in this chapter
Law and Justice
The author discusses the careful verification of legal points in the story by a solicitor and confirmation by judicial authority, emphasizing the importance of legal accuracy.
Characters to notice
- Laura Fairlie
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
- Marian Halcombe
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
- Anne Catherick
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
- Count Fosco
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
- Frederick Fairlie
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
- Walter Hartright
Mentioned as one of the characters who made friends for the author.
Key passages
“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character—for this plain reason, that the effect produced by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them.”
The author believes that a novel's main purpose is to tell a story, and that doing so does not prevent the development of characters, because a story's impact relies on the human interest tied to the events.
This passage articulates the author's core literary principle that story and character are interdependent.