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The King of Inventors
In this major biography, Catherine Peters explores the complicated life of Wilkie Collins, the greatest of the Victorian "Sensation" novelists and author of the famous Woman in White and The Moonstone . An intimate of Dickens and of the Pre-Raphaelites Holman Hunt and Millais, Collins was called the "king of inventors" by his publisher. On the surface, he was charming, unpretentious, and extremely good company, beloved by men and women. Beneath this façade, however, he was a complex and haunted man, addicted to laudanum, and his powerful, often violent novels revealed a dark side of Victorian life. He supported two common-law wives and their children, and as Peters shows, he provoked scandal by refusing to cloak his complicated love affairs in the customary hypocritical pretense of the period.
Having discovered a hitherto unknown autobiography by Wilkie Collins's mother, Peters draws on this document and on thousands of Collins's unpublished letters to create this provocative picture of his life and times. She describes in detail the saga of his exhausting struggle for better copyright protection for authors, especially for English authors in the United States. She has also studied the manuscripts of his novels, plays, and stories, including those which he did not complete, finding that some of his neglected novels turn out to be much more interesting than most readers realize today. This edition of the book has been supplemented to include an appendix describing Collins's "Tahitian" novel. Written when he was twenty, the manuscript of this work, Ioláni , was thought to have disappeared, but it has recently been rediscovered and sold to a private collector. For any Collins enthusiast, or for anyone interested in the literary history of the Victorian period, The King of Inventors provides a vivid account of Collins's unusual personal life in the context of his literary and artistic friendships and of newly revealed facts about the two women with whom he shared his "double life."
Originally published in 1993.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Having discovered a hitherto unknown autobiography by Wilkie Collins's mother, Peters draws on this document and on thousands of Collins's unpublished letters to create this provocative picture of his life and times. She describes in detail the saga of his exhausting struggle for better copyright protection for authors, especially for English authors in the United States. She has also studied the manuscripts of his novels, plays, and stories, including those which he did not complete, finding that some of his neglected novels turn out to be much more interesting than most readers realize today. This edition of the book has been supplemented to include an appendix describing Collins's "Tahitian" novel. Written when he was twenty, the manuscript of this work, Ioláni , was thought to have disappeared, but it has recently been rediscovered and sold to a private collector. For any Collins enthusiast, or for anyone interested in the literary history of the Victorian period, The King of Inventors provides a vivid account of Collins's unusual personal life in the context of his literary and artistic friendships and of newly revealed facts about the two women with whom he shared his "double life."
Originally published in 1993.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
524 pages, Hardcover
First published November 5, 1992
11 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Peters
8 booksAn expert in 19th-century fiction, Catherine Peters is a former Lecturer in English at Somerville College, Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 9, 2014
The last sentence of Catherine Peters’ biography of Wilkie Collins is “There are greater Victorian writers, but none who is quite like Wilkie Collins.”
Peters proves this statement to be true in this fascinating, meticulously researched, and very readable biography. Many readers, myself included, are familiar with Collins because of his association with Charles Dickens or perhaps through reading The Woman in White or The Moonstone. Through this biography, however, Peters unravels and reveals, in fascinating detail, many of the corners of Collins’ life that are generally little known and yet essential for a full understanding of both his life and his work.
Collins was a Victorian bohemian, a man who could be friends with the great artists and writers of the age such as Millais and Dickens, live his free-willed life in open disregard for Victorian convention, often dress in a manner that leaned away from convention, and unabashedly took drugs to ease his almost constant physical pain and suffering.
Peters follows Collins’ life with insight and sensitivity, and does not overbear her observations and analysis with either unnecessary criticism or false praise. Each of her chapters reveals more and more about Collins and his work. Specific chapters are dedicated to Collins’ major novels, and in each instance Peters carefully builds her case for the recurrent motifs and themes that reoccur in his novels.
To me, a biography must instruct, but not lecture the reader; it must enlighten but not be overly judgemental; most importantly, a good biography must make the reader want to return to the work of the writer being examined with fresh ideas, with rekindled curiosity and with more respect for the subject that has been examined.
Catherine Peters has written such a biography on Wilkie Collins. She has re-introduced me to an acquaintance and made him a new friend. This is a biography that deserves to find a place on your bookshelf.
Peters proves this statement to be true in this fascinating, meticulously researched, and very readable biography. Many readers, myself included, are familiar with Collins because of his association with Charles Dickens or perhaps through reading The Woman in White or The Moonstone. Through this biography, however, Peters unravels and reveals, in fascinating detail, many of the corners of Collins’ life that are generally little known and yet essential for a full understanding of both his life and his work.
Collins was a Victorian bohemian, a man who could be friends with the great artists and writers of the age such as Millais and Dickens, live his free-willed life in open disregard for Victorian convention, often dress in a manner that leaned away from convention, and unabashedly took drugs to ease his almost constant physical pain and suffering.
Peters follows Collins’ life with insight and sensitivity, and does not overbear her observations and analysis with either unnecessary criticism or false praise. Each of her chapters reveals more and more about Collins and his work. Specific chapters are dedicated to Collins’ major novels, and in each instance Peters carefully builds her case for the recurrent motifs and themes that reoccur in his novels.
To me, a biography must instruct, but not lecture the reader; it must enlighten but not be overly judgemental; most importantly, a good biography must make the reader want to return to the work of the writer being examined with fresh ideas, with rekindled curiosity and with more respect for the subject that has been examined.
Catherine Peters has written such a biography on Wilkie Collins. She has re-introduced me to an acquaintance and made him a new friend. This is a biography that deserves to find a place on your bookshelf.
December 1, 2011
Compared to the conventions of Victorian morality as presented in the literature of the time, many Victorian novelists had private lives which may have raised some eyebrows. Dickens separated secretly from his wife in favour of the young actress Ellen Ternan, George Eliott lived openly with G.H. Lewes who was already married to someone else, and Thackeray confined his wife to an asylum in France due to her mental illness. But none had as unconventional a private life as Wilkie Collins. From 1858, except for a brief period, he lived as man and wife with the widowed Caroline Graves, and from 1864 he set up a second household with Martha Rudd, by whom he had three children. Caroline did leave Wilkie in 1868 to marry Joseph Clow (Wilkie attended the wedding) but by 1871 she had returned to him. Caroline managed the bills and paid Martha's rent, and the Martha's children were welcome visitors to their household. Yet this remained a secret to Wilkie's reading public.
Not that Wilkie Collins was a conventional ladies' man - he was short with tiny hands and feet, an odd misshapen forehead, overweight and unfit. Yet he loved women and they loved him in return - he was kind and charming, and, in his own way, very honourable.When Wilkie, his brother Charles Collins and John Everett Millais heard a woman scream whilst walking by Regent's Park, it was Wilkie who went to investigate what was wrong. It may be that this was when he first met Caroline Graves, but it is more likely that it provided him with the genesis of the dramatic first meeting with Anne Catherick in The Woman in White.
Throughout the 1860s, Wilkie Collins was the most influential English novelist barring Dickens alone. The Woman in White defined the sensation novel which dominated this period, The Moonstone gave the genre its most lasting modern incarnation in the shape of the detective novel. From 1870 onwards, Collins' powers started to decline, partly due to the loss of his close friend's Dickens' influence; partly due to an increasing desire to write issue-based novels (Swinburne wickedly wrote
What brought good Wilkie's genius nigh perdition
Some demon whispered - 'Wilkie! have a mission' (Peters pg 313));
partly due to an increasing dependency on Laudenum to alleviate the pain of "rheumatic gout". Whatever the cause, he never recaptured the heights scaled in the 1860s.
Two contrasting books examine his life in detail. First published in 1988, William Clarke's The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins focusses almost entirely on the man, his life and that of his family. Clarke, who died earlier this year, was a leading financial journalist whose wife was a great-granddaughter of Collins. This family connection enabled him to access Collins' bank accounts and to try to explain why, despite the careful construction of his will in a manner worthy of one of the plots of his novels, both sides of his family saw little benefit from the wealth that he had accumulated. Clarke shows that in all probability the family was swindled by his lawyer/son-in-law Henry Bartley.
For all its meticulous research and in some cases the first-hand testimony of elderly family members, the Secret Life largely passes over the novels themselves. The King of Inventors by Catherine Peters remedies this shortcoming. Peters sets out the thesis that Collins was haunted by a second self, a double that was often behind him, especially in his later opium-influenced years. This double manifests itself in his novels which are primarily concerned with questions of identity. Certainly, doubles feature largely in his works, from Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White, to the multiple Alan Armadales, to the twin brothers Oscar and Nugent Dubourg in Poor Miss Finch. And even when doubles are not involved, the novels usually resolve round questions of identity, literally in The Law and the Lady, or as a question of legitimacy of birth in The Dead Secret or No Name, or of marriage in Man and Wife.
Peters combines a perceptive reading of the novels with a thorough and well-researched construction of Collins' life, and, whilst she doesn't have all the access that William Clarke has obtained, her use of the texts of the novels to illuminate the biography is much superior. As an example, Peters describes three aspects of Collins' own character revealed in The Law and the Lady. Physically he is akin to husband Eustace Macallan, with his gentle eyes, beard streaked with grey and limp. As a ladies' man, he is represented by the elderly roue Major Fitz-David, and as a writer and fantasist by Miserrimus Dexter. She goes on to show how further extreme aspects of this his most bizarre creation were to be seen in his temperamental actor-friend Charles Fechter, who was also a heavy-drinking, food-loving extrovert. Clarke, however, dismisses The Law and the Lady in a paragraph.
Yet Wilkie's private life ultimately remains a mystery. The circumstances in which he first met both Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd remain matters of speculation. Why Caroline Graves should choose to get married in 1867, and then return once again to Wilkie, is also out of the reach of the biographers. And most mysteriously of all, why should someone who dedicated his life to writing about identity, illegitimacy and the problems inherent in legal ambiguity choose not to attempt to legitimise in some way the two families for which he was responsible.Both Clarke and Peters attempt explanations, but in the end, Wilkie's own life proves the one intricate plot incapable of resolution.
Taken from my blog http://roderick-random.blogspot.com/2...
Not that Wilkie Collins was a conventional ladies' man - he was short with tiny hands and feet, an odd misshapen forehead, overweight and unfit. Yet he loved women and they loved him in return - he was kind and charming, and, in his own way, very honourable.When Wilkie, his brother Charles Collins and John Everett Millais heard a woman scream whilst walking by Regent's Park, it was Wilkie who went to investigate what was wrong. It may be that this was when he first met Caroline Graves, but it is more likely that it provided him with the genesis of the dramatic first meeting with Anne Catherick in The Woman in White.
Throughout the 1860s, Wilkie Collins was the most influential English novelist barring Dickens alone. The Woman in White defined the sensation novel which dominated this period, The Moonstone gave the genre its most lasting modern incarnation in the shape of the detective novel. From 1870 onwards, Collins' powers started to decline, partly due to the loss of his close friend's Dickens' influence; partly due to an increasing desire to write issue-based novels (Swinburne wickedly wrote
What brought good Wilkie's genius nigh perdition
Some demon whispered - 'Wilkie! have a mission' (Peters pg 313));
partly due to an increasing dependency on Laudenum to alleviate the pain of "rheumatic gout". Whatever the cause, he never recaptured the heights scaled in the 1860s.
Two contrasting books examine his life in detail. First published in 1988, William Clarke's The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins focusses almost entirely on the man, his life and that of his family. Clarke, who died earlier this year, was a leading financial journalist whose wife was a great-granddaughter of Collins. This family connection enabled him to access Collins' bank accounts and to try to explain why, despite the careful construction of his will in a manner worthy of one of the plots of his novels, both sides of his family saw little benefit from the wealth that he had accumulated. Clarke shows that in all probability the family was swindled by his lawyer/son-in-law Henry Bartley.
For all its meticulous research and in some cases the first-hand testimony of elderly family members, the Secret Life largely passes over the novels themselves. The King of Inventors by Catherine Peters remedies this shortcoming. Peters sets out the thesis that Collins was haunted by a second self, a double that was often behind him, especially in his later opium-influenced years. This double manifests itself in his novels which are primarily concerned with questions of identity. Certainly, doubles feature largely in his works, from Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White, to the multiple Alan Armadales, to the twin brothers Oscar and Nugent Dubourg in Poor Miss Finch. And even when doubles are not involved, the novels usually resolve round questions of identity, literally in The Law and the Lady, or as a question of legitimacy of birth in The Dead Secret or No Name, or of marriage in Man and Wife.
Peters combines a perceptive reading of the novels with a thorough and well-researched construction of Collins' life, and, whilst she doesn't have all the access that William Clarke has obtained, her use of the texts of the novels to illuminate the biography is much superior. As an example, Peters describes three aspects of Collins' own character revealed in The Law and the Lady. Physically he is akin to husband Eustace Macallan, with his gentle eyes, beard streaked with grey and limp. As a ladies' man, he is represented by the elderly roue Major Fitz-David, and as a writer and fantasist by Miserrimus Dexter. She goes on to show how further extreme aspects of this his most bizarre creation were to be seen in his temperamental actor-friend Charles Fechter, who was also a heavy-drinking, food-loving extrovert. Clarke, however, dismisses The Law and the Lady in a paragraph.
Yet Wilkie's private life ultimately remains a mystery. The circumstances in which he first met both Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd remain matters of speculation. Why Caroline Graves should choose to get married in 1867, and then return once again to Wilkie, is also out of the reach of the biographers. And most mysteriously of all, why should someone who dedicated his life to writing about identity, illegitimacy and the problems inherent in legal ambiguity choose not to attempt to legitimise in some way the two families for which he was responsible.Both Clarke and Peters attempt explanations, but in the end, Wilkie's own life proves the one intricate plot incapable of resolution.
Taken from my blog http://roderick-random.blogspot.com/2...
August 3, 2022
Frankly, I found it a disappointing book: written by an English lecturer, it will be of more interest to literature students as Catherine Peters devotes large sections of her narrative to analysing Collins’ plots and characters. My academic background and enduring interest is in history and sociology – I feel Peters does not really locate Collins in his era or place.
For students of the history of publishing, she does go into some detail about his battles to secure publishing rights, protect copyright, tackle public lending rights, etc. Collins, it is clear, was a very material man – he was very concerned about his income and savings … and clearly enjoyed life’s pleasures.
The image I get from the book is of a man enjoying a privileged, dilletante existence. Collins mixed with the literary and artistic elite of his day – notably Dickens. He grew up, we learn, one of two sons of an established artist who happened to be a high Tory. He grew up in a sitting room and soirée society, completely removed from the realities of Victorian urbanisation and industrialisation – the only intrusion city politics makes into their lives is during the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, when Collins’ father is forced to swallow his Tory principles and celebrate the Act by placing candles in all the family home’s windows, on pain of having their glass shattered by a stone-bearing mob.
Collins senior was an established society painter – portraits of the great and the good, landscapes, etc., he didn’t slap coats of emulsion on walls. He was successful enough to take the family on a two year tour of Italy, via France, during which they apparently spent an inordinate amount of time attending services in ‘English’ churches. Collins senior was clearly selective in what Continental culture he was prepared to absorb … I’ll avoid references to Brexit.
Once returned to London, the 14-year old Wilkie is dispatched to a boarding school a couple of miles from the family home (the English middle classes do like to send their boys away to be bullied, buggered and brutalised while they learn the Classics, Christianity, Capitalism, allegiance to the Crown … and how to play cricket and rugger).
I suspect young Wilkie was a bit of a dud, not a sportsman, not a great academic success – he doesn’t progress from school to a place at Oxford or Cambridge, instead he gets a petit-bourgeois job in Commerce as a clerk in a tea importing firm while his father speculates on getting him a career in the Church … he eventually dabbles in learning Law while he adventures into writing.
You suspect he likes the status and the elan of being a ‘writer’, it’s a colourful identity he could hide behind while still being a grey, bourgeois clerk … he’s just a bit concerned about the lack of security to be found writing professionally, especially as he’s clearly discovered a love for comfortable living.
He strikes up a friendship with Dickens, an established star, and accompanies him on his tours of the poorer quarters of London, looking for stories and characters and atmosphere. It’s clear they were regulars in the city’s brothels, but Peters is a bit coy about this. Child prostitution was widespread (the age of consent was raised from 12-13 in 1875); while it’s estimated that some 80,000 women in London depended on prostitution to make a living, 2700 children were treated annually for venereal diseases.
Collins was concerned about social issues – he alludes to some in his novels, he wrote articles for ‘radical’ publications … but he doesn’t come across as a man committed to social change. Peters doesn’t spell this out, makes few comments on Collins’ world view, but I can’t help feeling any radicalism he embraced was merely cosmetic – he wouldn’t let the realities of life interfere with his self-indulgence and ego-trip as a writer. He aids a friend seduce an 11-year old girl, he lives unmarried with a widow and her child while maintaining a mistress and his children.
Collins writing eventually gave him the financial resources to maintain twin households and to embark on regular European tours and trips around England and Scotland. He’s writing commercially, he’s worked out what sells – he’s not pursuing any moral crusade or trying to get a message across. There are different genres of prostitution
Catherine Peters has an easy writing style and, if you’re wanting background on Wilkie Collins’ writing for an essay of literary criticism, there’s plenty here. She clearly establishes Collins as a privileged Victorian who had concerns about his status and who was determined to protect his income.
He lives a comfortable bourgeois London life, although he is plagued by ill health and spends much of his adult life dependent on large daily doses of laudanum (opium) … plus other drugs, tinctures, patent medicines … and daily advice from doctors. I tend to suspect there’s something of the hypochondriac about him … although, ahem, I may be doing him an injustice.
Peters is weak on psychological and social analysis of Collins and his world. She alludes a couple of times to Carl Jung – and if her knowledge and understanding of human psychology is confined to (or even includes any respect for) that charlatan, we’re clearly not going to get many insights into Collins’ character. Suffice to say, she records that, when confronted with two of the major events in European history which must have animated discussion and concern across London (the Crimean War in 1854 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1), Collins records his concern that these might have a detrimental effect on book sales. I can only assume that the American Civil War (1861-5) must have cost him a few bucks!
We get a factual account of where Collins went and some of what he did. We get precious little analysis of the man. As a result, Collins remains elusive. I end up suspecting that he was rather a grey little figure: for a time he was the constant companion of Dickens, Dickens, I suspect, needed an acolyte to keep him company. Collins basked in the glory. Dickens famously toured America giving dramatic performances of his work, holding audiences rapt. Collins tours America, and clearly lacks stage presence, clearly fails to hold an audience.
Grey is how Collins emerges in this biography. He dabbles. He obviously sees himself as the star of his own world … others might find him an agreeable enough fellow, might enjoy basking in his celebrity, but he hasn’t the dominant persona of a Dickens, so he simply remains a grey little bourgeois.
Interesting biography if you’re writing an essay on Collins’ novels, but it lacks the ability to capture the man … maybe because his essential greyness makes him so elusive.
For students of the history of publishing, she does go into some detail about his battles to secure publishing rights, protect copyright, tackle public lending rights, etc. Collins, it is clear, was a very material man – he was very concerned about his income and savings … and clearly enjoyed life’s pleasures.
The image I get from the book is of a man enjoying a privileged, dilletante existence. Collins mixed with the literary and artistic elite of his day – notably Dickens. He grew up, we learn, one of two sons of an established artist who happened to be a high Tory. He grew up in a sitting room and soirée society, completely removed from the realities of Victorian urbanisation and industrialisation – the only intrusion city politics makes into their lives is during the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, when Collins’ father is forced to swallow his Tory principles and celebrate the Act by placing candles in all the family home’s windows, on pain of having their glass shattered by a stone-bearing mob.
Collins senior was an established society painter – portraits of the great and the good, landscapes, etc., he didn’t slap coats of emulsion on walls. He was successful enough to take the family on a two year tour of Italy, via France, during which they apparently spent an inordinate amount of time attending services in ‘English’ churches. Collins senior was clearly selective in what Continental culture he was prepared to absorb … I’ll avoid references to Brexit.
Once returned to London, the 14-year old Wilkie is dispatched to a boarding school a couple of miles from the family home (the English middle classes do like to send their boys away to be bullied, buggered and brutalised while they learn the Classics, Christianity, Capitalism, allegiance to the Crown … and how to play cricket and rugger).
I suspect young Wilkie was a bit of a dud, not a sportsman, not a great academic success – he doesn’t progress from school to a place at Oxford or Cambridge, instead he gets a petit-bourgeois job in Commerce as a clerk in a tea importing firm while his father speculates on getting him a career in the Church … he eventually dabbles in learning Law while he adventures into writing.
You suspect he likes the status and the elan of being a ‘writer’, it’s a colourful identity he could hide behind while still being a grey, bourgeois clerk … he’s just a bit concerned about the lack of security to be found writing professionally, especially as he’s clearly discovered a love for comfortable living.
He strikes up a friendship with Dickens, an established star, and accompanies him on his tours of the poorer quarters of London, looking for stories and characters and atmosphere. It’s clear they were regulars in the city’s brothels, but Peters is a bit coy about this. Child prostitution was widespread (the age of consent was raised from 12-13 in 1875); while it’s estimated that some 80,000 women in London depended on prostitution to make a living, 2700 children were treated annually for venereal diseases.
Collins was concerned about social issues – he alludes to some in his novels, he wrote articles for ‘radical’ publications … but he doesn’t come across as a man committed to social change. Peters doesn’t spell this out, makes few comments on Collins’ world view, but I can’t help feeling any radicalism he embraced was merely cosmetic – he wouldn’t let the realities of life interfere with his self-indulgence and ego-trip as a writer. He aids a friend seduce an 11-year old girl, he lives unmarried with a widow and her child while maintaining a mistress and his children.
Collins writing eventually gave him the financial resources to maintain twin households and to embark on regular European tours and trips around England and Scotland. He’s writing commercially, he’s worked out what sells – he’s not pursuing any moral crusade or trying to get a message across. There are different genres of prostitution
Catherine Peters has an easy writing style and, if you’re wanting background on Wilkie Collins’ writing for an essay of literary criticism, there’s plenty here. She clearly establishes Collins as a privileged Victorian who had concerns about his status and who was determined to protect his income.
He lives a comfortable bourgeois London life, although he is plagued by ill health and spends much of his adult life dependent on large daily doses of laudanum (opium) … plus other drugs, tinctures, patent medicines … and daily advice from doctors. I tend to suspect there’s something of the hypochondriac about him … although, ahem, I may be doing him an injustice.
Peters is weak on psychological and social analysis of Collins and his world. She alludes a couple of times to Carl Jung – and if her knowledge and understanding of human psychology is confined to (or even includes any respect for) that charlatan, we’re clearly not going to get many insights into Collins’ character. Suffice to say, she records that, when confronted with two of the major events in European history which must have animated discussion and concern across London (the Crimean War in 1854 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1), Collins records his concern that these might have a detrimental effect on book sales. I can only assume that the American Civil War (1861-5) must have cost him a few bucks!
We get a factual account of where Collins went and some of what he did. We get precious little analysis of the man. As a result, Collins remains elusive. I end up suspecting that he was rather a grey little figure: for a time he was the constant companion of Dickens, Dickens, I suspect, needed an acolyte to keep him company. Collins basked in the glory. Dickens famously toured America giving dramatic performances of his work, holding audiences rapt. Collins tours America, and clearly lacks stage presence, clearly fails to hold an audience.
Grey is how Collins emerges in this biography. He dabbles. He obviously sees himself as the star of his own world … others might find him an agreeable enough fellow, might enjoy basking in his celebrity, but he hasn’t the dominant persona of a Dickens, so he simply remains a grey little bourgeois.
Interesting biography if you’re writing an essay on Collins’ novels, but it lacks the ability to capture the man … maybe because his essential greyness makes him so elusive.
January 1, 2018
Best known as an English writer and playwright in the late 1800s, Wilkie Collins may be best known for “The Woman in White” and ‘The Moonstone”. Author Catherine Peters looks at his private life and his impact on the literary world. It was interesting to read about his impact on copyright issues in the Victorian period, the scandal from his two common-law wives, and his addiction to laudanum. The author used a variety of unpublished letters and manuscripts and an autobiography by his mother to show how his relationships and friendships with other readers like Charles Dickens lead him to mentor young writers. This well-research biography includes a list of illustrations, references, bibliography, and Index. Charles Collins’ “Secret Connection”, Wilkie Collins’s Travelling Desk, and Wilkie Collins’ first unpublished novel are included as appendixes.
I received this book through a random giveaway. Although encouraged as a courtesy to provide feedback, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
I received this book through a random giveaway. Although encouraged as a courtesy to provide feedback, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
June 7, 2017
This bio gives the reader everything. It details Collins' life from beginning to end and also has commentary on all the major novels some of the short stories and the plays. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Wilkie Collins and his life. It also details copyright laws of the time and Victorian mores.
August 2, 2007
Biography of Wilkie Collins
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews