Wilkie Collins
Personal Information
Description
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's works appeared first in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words and they collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s, but began suffering from gout. Taking opium for the pain grew into an addiction. In the 1870s and 1880s his writing quality declined with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between Caroline Graves and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children. Source: [Wilkie Collins]( on Wikipedia.
Books
I Say No Or, The Love-Letter Answered And Other Stories
Outside the bedroom the night was black and still.
The Haunted Hotel
This is perhaps Collins' last lucid effort before ill health and opium drained his powers. A tale of ghostly terror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed Countess characterize and distinguish this powerful Collins novelette.
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
A story based on Dickens's and Collins's walking tour in the north of England.
The Wreck of the Golden Mary
The Golden Mary is sailing towards the Californian coast. There is a motley group of passengers – a man hoping to make money in the gold rush, an estranged fiancé, a mother and her child heading to meet the father. The ship is tragically struck by an iceberg and sinks. Luckily all the crew and passengers are moved safely to two lifeboats. The people though alive are far from safety as they float stranded on the open sea with minimum food and water between them. While they wait for rescue, they tell each other stories.
A House to Let
The Evil Genius. A Domestis Story
Unlike his usual style, this is a novel of conscience, without much melodrama; Collins weaves a story of what he delicately calls "sexual frailty." Trapped in an adulterous union, neither of two involved are happy in it. The husband has been divorced by his wife, and she has sole custody of their child. Now she is being courted by another man, and has almost decided to marry him. Not surprisingly, it was commercially most profitable, while inviting the disapprobation of Victorian society for its themes of adultery, divorce, custodial battles and women's rights.
The Christmas Stories [8 stories]
A Christmas tree -- What Christmas is as we grow older -- The poor relation's story -- The child's story -- The schoolboy's story -- Nobody's story -- The seven poor travellers -- The holly-tree.
The New Windmill Book of Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century
The Ostler / Wilkie Collins -- The old nurse's stories / Elizabeth Gaskell -- [Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb]( / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- [Pit and the Pendulum]( / Edgar Allan Poe -- Samuel Lowgood's revenge / Mary E. Braddon -- The signalman / Charles Dickens -- Lost hearts / M. R. James -- The three strangers / Thomas Hardy -- The judge's house / Bram Stoker -- [Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]( / Ambrose Bierce -- The phantom coach / Amelia B. Edwards -- A vendetta / Guy de Maupassant -- The red room / H. G. Wells.
The Cricket on the Hearth and other Christmas stories (Cricket on the Hearth / Haunted House / Holly-Tree)
Miss or Mrs.?
The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening light in the silence that is never known on land - the silence before sunrise, in a calm at sea.
The Book of the Sleuth
A thread of scarlet ; The little more / J.J. Bell -- The biter bit / William Wilkie Collins -- [Adventure of the Speckled Band]( [Adventure of the Priory School]( Aruthur[sic] Conan Doyle -- The purple death ; The crooked sou / William Le Queux -- The murders in the Rue Morgue ; The mystery of Marie Rogêt ; [Purloined Letter]( / Edgar Allan Poe -- The stolen white elephant / Mark Twain -- The Sunningdale murder ; The mind readers / Edgar Wallace -- Abel Crew / Mrs. Henry Wood -- The authors / Alan K. Russell.
Romance
My Lady's Money
Old Lady Lydiard sat meditating by the fireside, with three letters lying open on her lap.
The Dead Alive
"Heart all right," said the doctor. "Lungs all right. No organic disease that I can discover. Philip Lefrank, don't alarm yourself. You are not going to die yet. The disease you are suffering from is - overwork. The remedy in your case is - rest."