Victorians! discussion

Welcome to the group reading of Armadale by Wilkie Collins! In working with the reading schedule, I have used the Dover illustrated edition, published in 1977. I thought I would include the back-cover blurb from this book as it serves as an overview of both book and author:

“One of the finest plotters in 19th-century literature and one of the originators of the English detective novel, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was a figure of immense importance in the creation of the detective story as we know it today. His two greatest novels, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), continue to attract many readers, who enjoy their carefully worked-out plots and the detective work of Walter Hartwright and he famous police detective, Sergeant Cuff.

Collins’ third great mystery novel, long unavailable, is Armadale. First published in serial form in The Cornhill Magazine from 1864 to 1866, Armadale is an ingeniously plotted tale of mystery and intrigue, centering on the terrible destiny of two characters who are both named Allan Armadale.”

There is a little more, but I feel it is a little too spoilery to include here. This particular edition (if you happen to be using it) is reprinted from the original Cornhill installments, which accounts for some sections and chapters being cut into pieces. I have also ordered a Penguin Classics copy. If it would be helpful, I can publish an additional reading schedule with the page numbers included if the majority of you are using Penguin. Just let me know if you would like that posted!

Armadale is Collins's longest novel, published in 1866 and dedicated to John Forster (close friend and advisor to Charles Dickens). The story spans two generations of the Armadale families and the complex plot combines several of Collins's favourite themes, including the supernatural, identity, murder, and detection. A stage version of Armadale was published in 1866 to protect dramatic copyright. Collins noted in an Appendix that he had carefully researched certain aspects of the novel: 'Wherever the story touches on questions connected with Law, Medicine, or Chemistry, it has been submitted, before publication, to the experience of professional men.' The Ladies' Toilette Repository of Mrs Oldershaw was based on the Bond Street beauty parlour of the infamous Madame Rachel Leverson, and Lydia Gwilt's criminal past is partly drawn from the famous trial for murder of Madeleine Smith.

Collins wrote in the preface 'Viewed by the Clap-trap morality of the day, this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which is of all time, it is simply a book daring enough to speak the truth.' The critics rose to the challenge. The Spectator (9 June 1866) considered it 'a discordant mosaic instead of a harmonious picture' and its heroine 'a woman fouler than the refuse of the streets.' The Saturday Review (16 June 1866) remarked on Collins's 'strange capacity for weaving extraordinary plots. Armadale, from beginning to end, is a lurid labyrinth of improbabilities.' H. F. Chorley in The Athenaeum (2 June 1866) described the book as 'a sensation novel with a vengeance', with 'one of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction.' In the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot wrote 'The one of Collins's novels which we should choose as the most typical, or as the best of the more typical, and which we should recommend as a specimen of the melodramatic fiction of the epoch, is Armadale. It has no merit beyond melodrama, and it has every merit that melodrama can have.' More recent critics, however, have seen psychological depth and complexity as well as melodrama in the novel.

(Last two paragraphs from website Armadale - https://www.wilkie-collins.info/books...)

For those of you who would like more comprehensive information over the author and his contributions to literature, I have included the following links. If you read The Woman in White with us a few months ago, these may look familiar to you. Please feel free to share any information sources you may find!

Wilkie Collins' Biography
https://www.wilkie-collins.info/wilki...

An Article in the Smithsonian Magazine - "The Sensation Novelist Who Exposed the Plight of Victorian Women"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...

Collins' Impact on Literature - "Wilkie Collins' Contribution to Victorian Literature"
https://www.thecollector.com/wilkie-c...

An Article from Wilkie Collins Society - "Neo-Victorian Collins: Legacies and Afterlives"
https://wilkiecollinssociety.org/neo-...

If you need access to a copy of the book, here are several options:

Project Gutenberg - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1895

Full Text Archive - https://www.fulltextarchive.com/book/...

Audiobook on Librivox - https://librivox.org/armadale-by-wilk...

I believe there are other versions out there, as well, so feel free to Google others if these do not work for you.