Iubire oarba

by Wilkie Collins

Blind Love is Wilkie Collin's final novel. Although he did not live to complete the work, he left detailed plans for the last third of this novel which were faithfully executed by his colleague, the popular author Sir Walter Besant. The novel is set during the Irish Land War of the early 1880s and tells the story of Iris Henley, an independent young woman who marries the "wild" Lord Harry Norland, a member of an Irish secret society, and becomes unhappily drawn into a conspiracy plot." The Broadview edition of Blind Love includes a critical introduction and primary source materials that address the novel's focus on movements for Irish independence. Appendices include newspaper acconts of Ireland during the Land War and of the fraud case on which Collins based his story, articles reacting to Collins's sudden death, Punch cartoons depicting the English attitudes toward the Irish, and contemporary reviews.

Genres: Classics, Mystery, Fiction, Victorian, British Literature, 19th Century, Historical Fiction

287 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1890

About the author

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright, best known for The Woman in White (1860), an early sensation novel, and The Moonstone (1868), a pioneering work of detective fiction. Born to landscape painter William Collins and Harriet Geddes, he spent part of his childhood in Italy and France, learning both languages. Initially working as a tea merchant, he later studied law, though he never practiced. His literary career began with Antonina (1850), and a meeting with Charles Dickens in 1851 proved pivotal. The two became close friends and collaborators, with Collins contributing to Dickens' journals and co-writing dramatic works.
Collins' success peaked in the 1860s with novels that combined suspense with social critique, including No Name (1862), Armadale (1864), and The Moonstone, which established key elements of the modern detective story. His personal life was unconventional—he openly opposed marriage and lived with Caroline Graves and her daughter for much of his life, while also maintaining a separate relationship with Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.
Plagued by gout, Collins became addicted to laudanum, which affected both his health and later works. Despite declining quality in his writing, he remained a respected figure, mentoring younger authors and advocating for writers' rights. He died in 1889 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His legacy endures through his influential novels, which laid the groundwork for both sensation fiction and detective literature.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

From Wiki:
Blind Love was an unfinished novel by Wilkie Collins, which he left behind on his death in 1889. It was completed by historian and novelist Sir Walter Besant.

Collins's novel had already begun serialization in The Illustrated London News, even though the author had not yet completed it. (It ran from 6 July to 28 December of that year.) When it was published in book form on 1890, the volume included Besant's preface explaining the circumstances of the collaboration.

Collins had started writing the novel in 1887, when newspapers were full of stories about Fenian violence in the wake of the previous year's defeat of the First Irish Home Rule Bill. Collins frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese off London's Fleet Street and borrowed some traits for his male protagonist from John O'Connor Power who was also well known in the convivial tavern. Collins links the Irish Question to the Woman Question. The novel recounts the story of Lord Harry Norland, a member of a squad of political assassins; the book's heroine is Iris Henley, a bold and nonconformist Englishwoman who falls in love with the Irish Norland despite his criminal activities (the "blind love" of the title). The title was originally to have been Lord Harry, the colloquial name for the devil.

3* The Woman in White
4* The Moonstone
4* Who Killed Zebedee?
4* The Dead Alive
4* Mrs. Zant and the Ghost
3* A Fair Penitent
4* The Frozen Deep
4* The Haunted Hotel
4* The Law and the Lady
4* No Name
3* My Lady's Money
3* Mad Monkton And Other Stories
4* Armadale
3* The Traveller's Story of a Terribly Strange Bed
3* Stories by English Authors; England
3* Mr. Lismore And The Widow
3* The Dead Secret
4* Basil
3* The Two Destinies
4* Blind Love
TBR Poor Miss Finch
TBR Man and Wife
TBR The Queen of Hearts
TBR Hide and Seek

[Tania Moroi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acțiunea romanului se petrece în secolul al XIX-lea dezvăluind iubirea pasională a unei tinere englezoaice, Iris, care se căsătorește cu iresponsabilul Lord Harry, un explorator al drumurilor greșite ducând o viață aventuroasă, care se dovedește și un mare cheltuitor.
Eroina ajunge să cunoască peripeții, afaceri dubioase, escrocherii, amenințări la adresa liniștii sufletești.
Această iubire oarbă conduce la evenimente dramatice, iar misterele și presimțirea unor primejdii îi întunecau orice perspectivă de viitor.
Recomand celor dornici de o lectură relaxantă 😉

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given his own socially unconventional attitudes (he had a well-documented disdain for the institution of marriage), I think it's unlikely that the plot of this novel - ostensibly a cautionary tale about choosing the rascal over the upright man for a husband - was anything more than a convenient trope for the aging and ailing Collins. Whether that was also the case for the fellow-novelist, Walter Besant, who finished the novel from Collins' notes after the latter's 1889 death, I do not know.

My principal problem with this novel is not the young lady, Iris, who gives her heart away to the roguish Sir Harry, despite the constant supporting presence of the much more suitable (and very much enamoured) Hugh Mountjoy. My problem is that, as a rogue, Sir Harry's a vacillating weakling. Of course, in order to make him defensible as a love object for his heroine, Collins had to put him far more to the centre of the moral sliding scale than either the scheming murderer Dr. Vimpany or the rather faceless and nameless Irish rebels who go around assassinating (a) English landowners in Ireland and (b) people they conceive to have betrayed and insulted their cause. Sir Harry moves from ideological to financial crime with barely a hitch, but is unable to carry through with any particular villainy, even his own proposed fraud on a life insurance company after he goes to all the trouble of faking his own death. And one of the best moments in the novel, because it's not at all conventional, is that where Collins shows Sir Harry sitting vacillating in the presence of a medical murder, neither assisting nor interfering, and making it quite clear in the process that while that murder was always a likelihood, it had not been openly discussed with his confederate.

The break between Collins' writing and the part written by Besant is at the end of Chapter 48 (so noted in my copy), and is very noticeable. Besant doesn't seem to have made any effort to mimic Collins' fairly declarative style, and instead one immediately notices the much more broken sentences and heavy use of dashes. However, there is no floundering in moving the plot to its preordained conclusion; I just wish Besant had made a little more of the dramatic death of Doctor Vimpany in the flooding Solway Firth, a climax of the action that I vaguely feel must have been done before in 19th-century literature, possibly by Sir Walter Scott, as it was bringing up memories of a similar scene.

This is Collins at the very tail-end of his powers, and the story is incompletely realized, but I still found some interest in the proceedings. I also quite liked the three main women characters: Iris, Fanny (a fallen woman rescued by Iris, who thereafter became somewhat manically devoted to her), and Mrs. Vimpany, who was also reformed by Iris, though rather suddenly. The women, interestingly enough, are all capable of more character development than the men.

This novel came up fairly early in my reading of Collins because the title starts with the letter "B" and my collection is alphabetical. If you are reading Collins according to a more sensible plan (merit of the novels, or even chronology), you can safely leave this one to the end, but there's no need to omit it.

[Ruby Bibi · Rating 4 out of 5]

-It's the mid to late 1800's and Iris Henley, who comes from a fine family, though not nobility, is being pushed by her father to marry Hugh Mountjoy, who is respected and wealthy. Iris, though, has her heart set on Lord Harry Norland, who is the second son and titled, but who has led a life of notoriety.
-Despite Hugh being the finer man and more suited to a woman of character, like Iris, Iris remains drawn to Lord Harry. Hugh Mountjoy was a childhood friend of Iris, and, despite his own strong feelings for Iris, he remains willing to be her friend through all that she goes through.
-Against the wishes of her father, Iris decides to marry Lord Harry. Her father wants nothing to do with her, as he foresees that this will be an ill fated marriage and he can't contend with the idea that his daughter has disobeyed him.
-The two newlyweds must leave England, for Lord Harry had gotten involved with a criminal element called the Invincibles, from whom a member is never allowed to secede. When Lord Harry's close friend, who also happens to be Hugh Mountjoy's brother, was assassinated by a member of the the Invincibles, Lord Harry tried to take revenge. In turn, he became a marked man by that group.
-The couple live in Paris, but Lord Harry, who was not given funds by his father because of the reputation that Lord Harry earned, must come up with other means of making money. Although Iris was not given any money by her father, she did have a small inheritance from her mother, which she had access to.
-Lord Harry had gotten involved with a Dr. Vimpany, who was always scheming to try to supplement his income. When an investment that Lord Harry made with the bulk of Iris' inheritance turned sour, he allowed himself to fall under the influence of Dr. Vimpany, to defraud others out of a sizeable amount of money.
-Iris has three devoted people which, because of her fine and kind character, are willing to do anything to help her, and they get involved in uncovering the fraud, but only after Lord Harry pulled Iris to be an accomplice.
-Again and again, Iris' feelings of devotion, which are returned by Lord Harry, blind her to the fact that Lord Harry has a knack for associating with very low elements of society, and despite their feelings for each other, this can only lead to heartache. As in real life, not everyone is all bad, nor all good, and there is a good deal of remorse by many characters who are influenced to follow a bad path, but who ultimately rebel against their situation to make amends.
-Very well done and a good examination of how even good people can fall prey to evil when they feel they have no place to turn.

[Dianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wilkie Collins died during the writing of this novel but left instructions on how it was to be finished, the details of which Walter Besant was faithful to follow. The novel is set in the late 1880s and follows the story of Iris Henley, who is disinherited by her father when she marries bad boy Lord Harry Norland. I love the language of that age, but I'm finding many of the the stories I read quite similar in plot line. Unfortunately, I was reading Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady at the same time and I found myself getting the characters mixed up, what with both leading ladies marrying the wrong man and slowly coming to their senses later. It didn't help that one was Isabel and one was Iris but I probably shouldn't have been reading them at the same time anyway. I liked The Woman in White better than this one, but still, it wasn't bad.

[J.S. Giles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. Iris Henley is a perfect example of a person who cannot make the right decision despite being surrounded by the good counsel of true friends. Thankfully, or not, she is surrounded by good friends who do everything within their power to mitigate her poor choices with this “blind love” she has for a debased man. And truth be told, I found her to be very annoying with her virtuous cognizant stupidity.

Now as for other characters, Fanny Mere and Mrs. & Mr. Vimpany were my favorites. Especially Fanny Mere with her craft, fidelity and mysterious past would have been worthy of having her own novel.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? Wilkie Collins. Genius.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Blind Love’ is Wilkie Collins's last collaboration, with the help of the historian Walter Besant rather than his usual collaborator, Charles Dickens. It has to be acknowledged that Besant doesn't impose too much of his own personality in the book. In fact, if he hadn't given us an explanatory preface, it would be hard to believe that this was not all Collins's exclusive work.

The novel itself is about Iris, a besotted woman who, as a result of her infatuation for the younger son of the local Earl, makes all the wrong life decisions. Lord Harry Norland is an outlaw thanks to his connections with the Fenian brotherhood, but when Iris marries him over her family's objections, Lord Harry invites the enmity of the Fenians, in particular, their assassination arm, called The Invincibles, by renouncing his affiliation with the rebels.

Iris starts the novel as a high principled woman who sees in a thoroughly bad man the seeds of a higher morality, but degenerates into someone who falls to her husband's level in a short time. The character of the three women, Iris, Mrs Vimpany and Fanny Mere, on whom the plot rests, makes for an interesting study of women. Mrs Vimpany is the wife of the worst of Harry’s friends, a quack doctor. Starting out in life as an actress, and an abettor of Lord Harry and her husband Dr Vimpany in petty crime and as a spy, contact with Iris shames her into abandoning her degraded life. She leaves her husband, determined to be at least as good as Iris, and thereafter earns a strenuous living as a hospital nurse. In her new employment, she is of great help to Iris in her life’s crisis. The third woman in this novel, female-centric as almost all of Collins's other books, is Fanny Mere. She is a moral equivalent of the maimed creatures usually present in his other books, but who is absent here. Fanny’s good name has been so disgraced by a man that she is unable to find respectable employment until Iris takes her on as her personal maid. Her redemption lies in her absolute loyalty thereafter to Iris, even at the cost of great personal danger and privation. Incidentally, Collins's - and Besant’s - throwaway comments on women show them to be deeply misogynistic; whether they were responsible for the Victorian view of women as feeble minded nobodies, or whether the Victorian take on women influenced Wilkie Collins is still debated by Collins's fan following.

The plot of ‘Blind Love’ is a true sensation novel, with the Fenian motif adding a touch of realism to an otherwise unconvincing and melodramatic plot involving rebellion, revenge, assassination, blind infatuation, true love, sinister plots, murder, blackmail, suicide attempts, Victorian parental disapproval and cutting out of one's will one’s only child, bold bad romantic hero-villains, insurance scams, disillusion, and the slow, sad disintegration of a marriage, not necessarily in that order. The irony here is that the heroine is slowly corrupted into a criminal complicity, while the two women about her rise from a degenerate position into something approaching nobility. The hero is a patient Dobbin figure, while the villains are as negative as villains must be. Only – the bold bad villain shows the occasional trace of a great heart, and nothing in his life, to paraphrase a later writer, becomes him so much as the leaving of it.

A good collaborative effort, and a ripping Victorian yarn, even if it is not among the Big Four of Collins's oeuvre. All credit to Walter Besant, who remained faithful to the plot and characterisation and even the mood of Collins's narrative style.

[Michelle's Book Club · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blind Love is the last of English author, Wilkie Collins’s writings and was finished by Walter Besant at Collins’ request. In the 1986 edition of Blind Love published by Dover, Walter Besant pens the Preface on how he came to help Collins finish this book in 1889 when Collins was unfortunately on his deathbed. In the Preface Besant tells us that we may be able to tell when the book shifts from Collins’ writing to Besant’s. There are 64 (short) chapters in this book and around Chapter 55, 56 there seems to be a slight change in style where the dialog is shorter, maybe even more precise than before, so that is my best guess, but wherever the switch is, it does not in any way take away from the storyline. This particular edition from Dover has some lovely illustrations throughout and I was very fortunate to get this used copy on Amazon. The book is just over 300 pages and took me less than two weeks to read.

I happily add Blind Love to the list of my most favorite Wilkie Collins books, along with The Woman in White, Armadale and No Name as Victorian Literature at its best. It takes us back to a time when it took days and weeks to travel and correspond by letter. When the insurance policy was bought, I kind of knew where that was going, so a part of the plot is predictable, but how it plays out and how characters figure things out and react in their own unpredictable ways made it thoroughly entertaining and satisfying to read.

Along with adventure, humor and murders, this book centers on the love triangle of Iris Henley, Lord Harry Norland and Hugh Mountjoy. Collins had a way of writing independent-minded women characters that was exceptional, although these women somehow get mixed up with the worst of the rogues and find it difficult to untangle themselves, as is in this case and some of the other Collins books I mentioned earlier. Collins keeps us guessing from beginning to end and not in just the plot, but some of the characters themselves flip from protagonist to antagonist and vice versa, so that your opinion of them is likely to change over the course of the story.
Blind Love is in the public domain, which means it’s free for you to read or listen to at Gutenberg.org or Librivox.org.

I highly recommend this as one of Wilkie Collins best stories. If this sounds like a page turner to you, find your quiet place and start reading or listening to this one.

[Carolina García · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blind Love es la última novela de Wilkie Collins. Fue publicada por The Illustrated London News durante 1889. Sin embargo, tuvo que ser finalizada por Walter Bessant ante el fallecimiento de Collins. No tenía grandes expectativas sobre esta obra, pero Collins es un autor que no suele defraudar: buena pluma y entretenimiento. Si bien, no todas sus obras consiguen atraparme o, dicho con otras palabras, convencerme por igual. Esta llegó a mis manos por la curiosidad que me despertaban las particulares circunstancias de la misma (un trabajo a cuatro manos) y por la magnífica edición tipo facsímil y en tapa dura a un módico precio.
Aunque la sinopsis, apuntando a la cuestión irlandesa y a la situación de la mujer victoriana, no refleja propiamente la trama ni sus principales asuntos, no me arrepiento de la compra del libro ni del tiempo invertido en su lectura (la letra es diminuta, literal no exagero). Le doy a Blind Love un 3.5. Aunque el argumento decae, el principio y el final me han gustado mucho. En este sentido, Collins no defrauda pero Bessant ha estado a la altura. Los últimos dos párrafos de la novela han compensado muchas páginas que se han hecho largas.
Haciendo honor a su título, esta obra trata sobre el amor romántico como emoción que ofusca al mejor de los sentidos, atrayendo a decisiones muy malas a la más buena de las mujeres de la burguesía mercantil inglesa. Pero también el poder del amor es una debilidad para los hombres, incluso para el más débil de los aristócratas rurales irlandeses. Blind Love no desarrolla misterios, sí conspiraciones que resultan en estafas económicas y, sobre todo, emocionales. El engaño es uno de sus ejes temáticos junto al autoengaño, imprescindible para que campe el cegador poder del amor.
Blind Love es una obra muy inferior a otros títulos de Collins, con tramas relativamente parecidas. Estoy pensando, por ejemplo, en La dama de Blanco.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilkie Collins was hardly a saint and it’s perhaps his resistance to Victorian norms of behavior that help make him one of the few popular novelists of his day to survive with a modern readership. There are no saints or angels in his books, rather these characters all have deep flaws which make them seem more modern. Collin’s last novel (rather incompetently finished by his friend Walter Besant) is as entertaining as his more popular works. The complex plot sends the reader around the globe—to Ireland, Paris, Switzerland, Belgium, South Africa, and even America. It is filled with plot twists and thoroughly unconventional characters that will keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. The heroine of the novel, Iris, has fallen in love with an Irish bad-boy and revolutionary Lord Henry, despite the objections of her father and her other admirer, Mountjoy, whom she has repeatedly turned down in marriage. Instead, she marries her Irishman only to find out he is wanted by his old revolutionary group for denouncing them. He has surrounded himself with villainous friends, who soon have them embroiled in a scheme to make money and “disappear.” Luckily for Iris, she has a devoted friend and a faithful servant, both of whom have done dishonorable and scandalous things themselves, so they "smell a rat" and are able to snoop out the scheme and try and rescue her. Collins’ men are all dastardly or worthless. English men especially come across as weak, cruel, or incompetent. It is the woman that do all the spying, detecting, and writing (spying and writing play huge roles in the book) which ultimately save Iris from a possible conviction for fraud and abetting a murder. And rather than a conventional humbled and happy heroine at the end, Iris retains her affection for a man who, as bad as he was, made her feel loved and alive.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iris, a young English heiress, falls in love with and marries wild and irresponsible Sir Harry, an assassin for a secret Irish political society. A much wiser route would have been for her to marry Hugh Mountjoy, a truly wonderful man who loved her very much, and continued to be her friend and helper, even after she refused his marriage proposals. Her father disinherited her when she married Sir Harry, and that was just the beginning of her troubles. Harry was very much influenced by a scoundrel of a doctor who led him into crime, and Iris's virtue spiraled down for a quite a while, as well. First published after Collin's death in 1890, he had finished much of the book before he passed away, and the first parts had been published in serial form while he was still living. Before he died, he asked another author, Sir Walter Besant, to finish the book, and left copious, detailed notes on where he had planned to take the story. I listened to this novel as a free download from LibriVox.org.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilkie Collins had not finished this book at the time of his death in 1889 so it was completed by another author. I, frankly, didn't see any transition issues and only knew about it when there was an explanatory paragraph when the new author took up Wilke's pen. The setting is the Irish Land Wars in the early 1880's. The first part of the book is a little tedious and slow, but once the fraud and murder are introduced, it moves quickly and I was intrigued by what was going to happen next. The primary female character, Miss Henley, was certainly not a role model and is the source for the book name. She is completely blinded by love of the wrong guy and while paying the price ultimately for her naivete, it's painful to witness her weakness. I enjoy the slow pace and the deep descriptions/explanations that literature in this time embraced.

[Owl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sought out Wilkie Collins on the recommendation of a penpal and I was not disappointed!
A love story with dry wit, colorful and painfully human characters, as well as a "happy" ending where the good guys win and the bad guys lose. What more could you want?

One of my favorite lines: "The landlady herself took the dinner upstairs—a first course of mutton chops and potatoes, cooked to a degree of imperfection only attained in an English kitchen."

I'm off to look for more Wilkie Collins novels.

[One · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s tragic and infuriating. Harry had an small arc and not Iris. What I loved about some of the female characters in Woman in white are totally missing, even Fanny is described in one dimension. The switch plot is used again and the doctor is the italian but worse somehow. Can blind love do that to a person?

[Doubravka · Rating 2 out of 5]

To byla ale blbost.
Naprosto nekonzistentní charaktery, nesrozumitelný motivace, nesmyslný děj, hodně divná morálka, dílčí zápletka okopírovaná z Ženy v bílém (akorát tady nedává smysl, no).
(S tím, že knihu Collins nedokončil vlastnoručně, nic z toho podle všeho nijak nesouvisí.)
Napsaný je to skvěle a čte se to jedním dechem, to jo.

[Lavinia Chirica · Rating 3 out of 5]

O carte usoara, de citit inainte de somn...

[Matteo Fulgheri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'll stay away from Vicky Lit for a while...

[Beatrice Luiza Mosor · Rating 2 out of 5]

As the title shows it's a story about a woman who falls blindly in love with the wrong man. The ending will make some happy and some not, but it's a realistic point of view. I rated it with 2 stars because, beside the mistery and the predictible romance, there was not much more. The story dragged on for far too long and the action, which appears complicated, mysterious and interesting because of the way it is written, is actually not so.
I appreciated Wilkie Collins's "The woman in white" , therefore I admire him as a writer. On the other hand, this book disappointed me.

[Ajoyful1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willie Collins NEVER disappoints!

When I want real writing, real stories, without gratuitous anything, I read a Willie Collins book. I want to be engaged for weeks, like a tv binge, but a binge in my mind where I produce the images and the color from the words. This did not disappoint in any way. The story, the characters, the morality, the honour, and mostly the language-in all its richness, was hugely satisfying. His last book leaves me grieving. I will miss reading his literary works of art. Oh if only I can find another 19th century author whose works draw me in and allow me to escape to a story so rich with plot and descriptors. Please read and enjoy someone who describes human nature and discourse in a clear way.

[Suzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't my favorite book, but I liked the idea it presents that sometimes we love not because of what we see, but what we want to see. Iris was so in love with the idea of Harry that she married him and later was unhappy when she realized her fantasy was not who he was. And after his death, she went right back to loving the fantasy. It's thought provoking. The moral I got was make sure you love the person and not your made-up version of the person.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite by Collins, but it was still a fun read. The plot was fairly similar to the Woman in White, which made it difficult to finish. Plus the book was finished by someone else because Collins died before he could finish it himself. It was a fast read like all of his other novels-interesting and absorbing as well. I wish he could've finished the book himself!

[Trudy Pomerantz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second novel that I have read by Wilkie Collins. It is interesting to read novels from a different age which illustrate the ways in which our thinking has changed. While I enjoyed this novel and did not struggle to finish it, it was certainly not as gripping as Armadale.

[Olga Wojtas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr C died before completing this, and wasn't on form beforehand. He left detailed notes enabling his chum Walter Besant to finish it, but the join's obvious. He has a superb character in Mrs Vimpany but she sadly loses verve midway through.

[Lauren Zajaczkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

edited

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cautionary tale marrying the wrong man!

[Dd · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too sad till end

[April Sparrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not enjoy as much as his other works. female lead was not to my taste. Ending not as satisfactory either.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as The Woman in White or The Moonstone--granddaddy of all locked-room mysteries. Very slow in the beginning, picked up some near the end.