Wilkie Collins 
Poor Miss Finch 

What is "poor" about Miss Finch? Well, with a novel with names like "Mr Sebright" (he’s an eye specialist — "see bright", geddit?), it’s all about sight. You see, Lucilla Finch has been blind since infancy — until she meets the eccentric German doctor Herr Grosse who partially restores her sight. Far from treating her simply as a "poor" blind Victorian woman, this novel is conscious of the experience of blindness, particularly that of blindness and romance.Published a few years after his acclaimed mystery novel, "The Moonstone" (which starred Sarah Hadland in a recent BBC adaptation), Wilkie Collins now keeps up the mystery in "Poor Miss Finch". Having researched a real case of regained sight, Collins depicts great detail in Lucilla’s experience of colours whilst in the midst of a love triangle.Two brothers want Lucilla’s hand in marriage; their deception and plotting must be foiled before Lucilla unwittingly changes her life forever. —