In this Victorian tale, a young woman recuperating at her aunt's house in a Scottish town is spending a good deal of time looking out at the world through an upstairs window. Across the way is a university library; one of its windows holds particular interest-but the things she sees there at one moment are gone the next. Is what she has seen real, or a figment of her adolescent imagination?

In addition to an illuminating introduction, this edition includes a variety of background materials that help to set this extraordinary work of fiction in its literary and historical context.