White magic: The Woman in White has kept us in suspense for 150 years

One hundred and fifty years ago, The Woman in White was serialised in Dickens' periodical All the Year Round, following hot on the heels of A Tale of Two Cities. It was so successful that it helped raise circulation of the magazine from 38,500 to 100,000 a week, peaking at 300,000 over Christmas, and started a jittery mania for "sensation fiction", ensuring that society's nerve endings would be jangled more efficiently over the coming decades than the bells of St Paul's.