No Name

When their parents die within weeks of each other, the sheltered Vanstone sisters learn they are illegitimate and, under the cruel logic of English inheritance law, entitled to nothing. Their home and fortune pass to a spiteful relative, and even the family name is stripped away. Where gentle Norah submits, the fierce Magdalen refuses. Aided by the rascally Captain Wragge, she reinvents herself through disguise, stage performance, and a calculated marriage to recover what was taken from her. Wilkie Collins makes his heroine both schemer and sympathetic rebel, turning a sensation plot into a sharp protest against the laws that punished women for an accident of birth. This free PDF and EPUB edition restores one of his boldest novels.