The Woman in Black (Hill novel)

The Woman in Black is a 1983 gothic horror novel by English writer Susan Hill about a mysterious spectre that haunts a small English town. A television film adaptation with a screenplay by Nigel Kneale, was produced in 1989. In 2012, another film adaptation was released starring Daniel Radcliffe.

The book has also been adapted into a stage play by Stephen Mallatratt. The original London production ran 13,232 performances and is the second longest-running play in the history of the West End, after The Mousetrap.

Hill has acknowledged that the story was inspired by Henry James's novella The Turn Of The Screw, in particular the following description of the drowned governess:

"...a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful — with such an air also, and such a face! — on the other side of the lake."