Wilkie Collins

(1824 – 1889)

Biographical Sketch

William Wilkie Collins (London, UK, January 8, 1824 – London, UK, September 23, 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known for The Woman in White (1859), and The Moonstone (1868), the latter of which has been posited as the first modern English detective novel.

Born to the London painter William Collins and his wife, he moved with the family to Italy when he was twelve, living there and in France for two years and learning Italian and French. He worked initially as a tea merchant. After publishing Antonina, his first novel, in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some Collins work first appeared in Dickens’s journals Household Words and All the Year Round. They also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but began to suffer from gout and became addicted to the opium he took for the pain. His health and his writing quality then declined in the 1870s and 1880s. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between widow Caroline Graves – living with her for most of his adult life, treating her daughter as his – and the younger Martha Rudd, by whom he had three children.

Bibliography

Novels

Iolani, or Tahiti as it was. A Romance (1999)
– Written 1844.
Antonina (1850)
Basil (1852)
Hide and Seek (1854)
The Dead Secret (1856)
A Rogue’s Life (1856 / 1879)
The Woman in White (1860)
No Name (1862)
Armadale (1866)
The Moonstone (1868)
Man and Wife (1870)
Poor Miss Finch (1872)
– Dedicated to Frances Minto Elliot.
The New Magdalen (1873)
The Law and the Lady (1875)
The Two Destinies (1876)
The Fallen Leaves (1879)
Jezebel’s Daughter (1880)
– Novelisation of Collins’ play The Red Vial (1858).
The Black Robe (1881)
Heart and Science (1883)
I Say No (1884)
The Evil Genius (1886)
The Guilty River (1886)
The Legacy of Cain (1889)
Blind Love (1890)
– Unfinished; completed by Walter Besant.

Short Fiction

Volpurno, or, or the Student (1843)
The Last Stage Coachman (1843)
The Twin Sisters (1851)
The New Dragon of Wantley (1851)
A Passage in the Life of Perugino Potts (1852)
Mr Wray’s Cash Box. Or, the Mask and the Mystery: A Christmas sketch (1852)
A Terribly Strange Bed (1852)
Nine O’Clock! (1852)
Gabriel’s Marriage (1853)
A Stolen Letter (1854)
Sister Rose (1855)
The Yellow Mask (1855)
The Dream Woman (1855)
(AKA The Ostler)
Mad Monkton (1855)
(AKA The Monktons of Wincot Abbey)
The Lady of Glenwith Grange (1856)
Anne Rodway (1856)
After Dark (1856)
- The Traveller’s Story of A Terribly Strange Bed
- The Lawyer’s Story of A Stolen Letter
- The French Governess’s Story of Sister Rose
- The Angler’s Story of The Lady of Glenwith Grange
- The Nun’s Story of Gabriel’s Marriage
- The Professor’s Story of The Yellow Mask
- Uncle George; or, the Family Mystery (1956)
A Fair Penitent (1857)
The Siege of the Black Cottage (1957)
The Dead Hand (1857)
(AKA The Double-Bedded Room)
The Family Secret (1857)
The Biter Bit (1858)
(AKA Who is the Thief?)
A Marriage Tragedy (1858)
(AKA A Plot in Private Life)
Fauntleroy (1858)
(AKA A Paradoxical Experience)
The Poisoned Meal (1858)
(AKA A Case Worth Looking At)
A House to Let (1858)
– Co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter.
The Haunted House
– Co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, George Sala, and Hesba Stretton.
The Parson’s Scruple (1859)
(AKA A New Mind)
Blow Up With the Brig! (1859)
(AKA The Ghost in the Cupboard Room)
The Queen of Hearts (1859)
- Brother Owen’s Story of The Black Cottage
  (AKA The Siege of the Black Cottage)
- Brother Griffith’s Story of The Family Secret
  (AKA Uncle George; or, the Family Mystery)
- Brother Morgan’s Story of The Dream Woman
  (AKA The Ostler)
- Brother Griffith’s Story of Mad Monkton
  (AKA The Monktons of Wincot Abbey)
- Brother Morgan’s Story of The Dead Hand
  (AKA The Double-Bedded Room)
- Brother Griffith’s Story of The Biter Bit
  (Who is the Thief?)
- Brother Owen’s Story of The Parson’s Scruple
  (AKA A New Mind)
- Brother Griffith’s Story of A Plot in Private Life
  (AKA A Marriage Tragedy)
- Brother Morgan’s Story of Fauntleroy
  (AKA A Paradoxical Experience)
- Brother Owen’s Story of Anne Rodway
Memoirs of an Adopted Son (1961)
(AKA A Case Worth Looking At)
The Cauldron of Oil (1961)
(AKA A Case Worth Looking At)
The Fatal Cradle
(AKA Picking Up Waifs at Sea)
Miss or Mrs? And Other Stories in Outline (1873)
- Miss or Mrs?
- Blow up with the Brig!
- The Fatal Cradle: Othersise the Heartrending Story of Mr Heavysides
The Frozen Deep (1874)
A Mad Marriage (1874)
(AKA A Fatal Fortune; A Sane Madman)
John Jago’s Ghost (1874)
(AKA The Dead Alive)
The Frozen Deep and Other Stories (1874)
- The Frozen Deep
- The Dream Woman
- John Jago’s Ghost; or The Dead Alive
Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman (1875)
(AKA The Clergyman’s Confession)
Mr Captain and the Nymph (1876)
(AKA The Captain’s Last Love)
Mr Percy and the Prophet (1877)
Miss Bertha and the Yankee (1877)
(AKA The Duel in Herne Wood)
The Haunted Hotel (1878)
Miss Mina and the Groom (1878)
(AKA A Shocking Story)
Mr Marmaduke and the Minister (1878)
(AKA The Mystery of Marmaduke)
My Lady’s Money (1879)
Mrs Zant and the Ghost (1879)
(AKA The Ghost’s Touch)
The Devil’s Spectacles (1879)
(AKA The Magic Spectacles)
Miss Morris and the Stranger (1881)
(AKA How I Married Him)
Mr Cosway and the Landlady (1881)
(AKA Your Money or Your Life)
Mr Policeman and the Cook (1881)
(AKA Who Killed Zebedee?)
Fie! Fie! or, the Fair Physician (1882)
Mr Lismore and the Widow (1883)
(AKA She Loves and Lies)
A Little Fable (1883)
Mr Medhurst and the Princess (1884)
(AKA Royal Love)
She Loves and Lies (1884)
(AKA Mr Lismore and the Widow)
Mr Lepel and the Housekeeper (1884)
(AKA The Girl at the Gate)
Love’s Random Shot (1884)
The Poetry Did It (1885)
The Ghost’s Touch and Other Stories (1885)
- The Ghost’s Touch
  (AKA Mrs. Zant and the Ghost)
- My Lady’s Money
- Percy and the Prophet
Victims of Circumstances: A Sad and Brave Life (1886)
Victims of Circumstances: Farmer Fairweather (1886)
Victims of Circumstances: The Hidden Cash (1886)
Miss Dulane and My Lord (1886)
(AKA An Old Maid’s Husband
The First Officer’s Confession (1887)
Little Novels (1887)
- Mrs Zant and the Ghost
  (AKA The Ghost’s Touch)
- Miss Morris and the Stranger
  (AKA How I Married Him’)
- Mr Cosway and the Landlady
  (AKA Your Money or Your Life)
- Mr Medhurst and the Princess
  (AKA Royal Love)
- Mr Lismore and the Widow
  (AKA She Loves and Lies)
- Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman
  (AKA The Clergyman’s Confession)
- Miss Mina and the Groom
  (AKA A Shocking Story)
- Mr Lepel and the Housekeeper
  (AKA The Girl at the Gate)
- Mr Captain and the Nymph
  (AKA The Captain’s Last Love)
- Mr Marmaduke and the Minister
  (AKA The Mystery of Marmaduke)
- Mr Percy and the Prophet
  (AKA Percy and the Prophet)
- Miss Bertha and the Yankee
  (AKA The Duel in Herne Wood)
- Miss Dulane and My Lord
  (AKA An Old Maid’s Husband)
- Mr Policeman and the Cook
  (AKA Who Killed Zebedee?)
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1890)

Non-Fiction

Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A. (1848)
Rambles Beyond Railways, or, Notes in Cornwall taken a-foot (1851)
– With illustrations by Henry C. Brandling.
My Miscellanies (1863)

Plays

The Frozen Deep (1857)
– Co-written with Charles Dickens.
The Red Vial (1858)
No Thoroughfare (1867)
– Co-written with Charles Dickens.
Black and White (1869)
Miss Gwilt (1875)

Online Editions of Wilkie Collins’s Works

A Selection of Quotes

The Woman in White

“Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.”

“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”

“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”

“Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.”

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.”

“Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.”

“Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

“‘I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ‘whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.'”

“I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature’s only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.”

“But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?”

“We don’t want genius in this country unless it is accompanied by respectability.”

“He was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which is peculiar to English servants.”

Armadale

“The books – the generous friends who met me without suspicion – the merciful masters who never used me ill!”

“I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.”

The Moonstone

“I haven’t much time to be fond of anything … but when I have a moment’s fondness to bestow, most times … the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father’s nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.”

“In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.”

“‘If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),’ says Sergeant Cuff, ‘you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business.'”

“I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me – and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it.”

No Name

“Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.”

I Say No

“If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settlement, that I am to have chocolate under the pillow.”

My Miscellanies”

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.”

Find more quotes by Wilkie Collins on Wikiquote and Goodreads.