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When Collins' The Woman in White was published in 1860, it became an instant international bestseller. Since then, it has never been out of print and has been adapted for film, television, and stage. After establishing his reputation with The Woman in White, Collins went on to write one of the first detective novels, The Moonstone (1864). So, who was Wilkie Collins in real life?
Wilkie Collins: biography
Wilkie Collins was a sensation novelist whose clever plotting and colourful characterisation made him an international success in his own lifetime. He was both praised and criticised for the intense satire he directed towards the social elite.
The Sensation novel is a subgenre of the Gothic novel. Its name derives from the aim of the novel, which is to instil 'sensations' within the reader, such as terror, disgust, excitement, sadness and shock. The sensation novel often also provided a space for the reader to tackle anxieties typical of the Victorian era.
Texts would often address dark family secrets, adultery, crime, and the debate between reason and the supernatural. Sensation novels were precursors to modern detective and suspense novels.
Because of their focus on stirring up 'sensations' and emotions in their readers, sensation novels were typically considered low-brow literature, with some critics even considering the genre a corrupting influence on morality. For this reason, Collins was never respected to the same level as his counterpart, Charles Dickens.
Early Life
William Wilkie Collins was born on 8 January 1824 in London during the late Georgian Period. In his early teenage years, Collins' family moved to France and Italy when Collins' father, the successful landscape artist William Collins (1788-1847), took his family to experience the life and scenery there. Collins' father opened up new worlds to his children through travel. He also demanded the best of his children; being a pious Christian meant his expectations were high.
Fig 1. - Wilkie Collins is primarily known as a sensationalist novelist from the late Georgian Period.
The Georgian period was a period of British history lasting from 1714 until 1830–37. It was named after the four consecutive King Georges that reigned during the period, each of which was a member of the House of Hanover from Germany. This period was marked by social change, including the continuing growth of the British Empire, the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and increasing divisions between the upper, middle, and lower classes.
After his return to England, Collins joined a private boarding school. During this time he was relentlessly tormented by a classmate who, among other punishments, insisted that Wilkie tell him stories. Although this was a form of bullying, Collins reflected that he enjoyed storytelling and that the experience encouraged him to pursue a career as a writer.
Upon graduating from school, Collins began to work for a tea merchant, but he knew that this wasn't the job for him. He moved from trading tea to studying law in 1851, and it was during his studies that Collins began his lifelong friendship with the literary icon Charles Dickens.
Literary career
Although Collins had been dedicated to his studies, he was always creating stories in the background. He had already started writing his first published novel Antonina in 1850; over the next decade, Collins' literary dream seemed more and more attainable.
Collins' partnership with Dickens was mutually beneficial. The two would often work collaboratively and would routinely promote each other's solo work. The pair performed together in Collins' play, The Frozen Deep (1856). Soon after, Collins would create two of his most successful novels. The Woman in White (1860), and The Moonstone (1864).
The Moonstone was endorsed by Charles Dickens, who published the novel in his weekly serial fiction journal, All The Year Round.
Collins wrote extensively over the course of his life, authoring a range of novels, such as Basil (1852), Hide and Seek (1854), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), Man and Wife (1870), Poor Miss Finch (1872), and The Law and the Lady (1875). Despite this, no other books would come close to matching the success of his two most famous novels.
Later life
Later in life, Collins grew ill. Among other ailments, he suffered from a painful condition known as gout for much of his adult life and developed a lifelong dependency on laudanum in increasing amounts.
Laudanum: an extract of opium dissolved in alcohol that was freely used as medication.
Wilkie Collins never married but maintained an unconventional double life, living simultaneously with two different women. This adulterous lifestyle, combined with his addiction to medication, led his friendship with Dickens to become strained in the years before Dickens' death.
Twenty years of ill health, laudanum, and stress took their toll on Collins. He died on 23 September 1889 at the age of 65.
Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White
In his most famous book, The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins combines his imaginative skill as a novelist with his legal knowledge to create a unique, exciting sensation and mystery novel.
The narrative revolves around Walter Hartright, an art teacher who finds himself amidst a devilish conspiracy. When Walter begins a new job teaching art in Limmeridge, the home of the Fairlie family, things quickly go awry. Suddenly, Hartright is forced to unravel a cunning plot designed by two rich, wicked villains, Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco. Glyde intends to secure his fortune by marrying Laura Fairlie, an innocent middle-class woman, and securing her inheritance once she is declared deceased. To these two men, murder is a small price to pay for the opportunity to obtain a large sum of money.
The strangest, most well-known aspect of the plot is Hartright's terrifying encounter with the woman in white. The scary, secretive nature of the woman, combined with her strikingly close resemblance to Laura Fairlie, a key character in the novel, adds an extra layer of mystery to the plot. The moment that Hartright meets the strange girl in the dead of night is now iconic, and has been reinterpreted several times by contemporary filmmakers.
Eventually, the reader is informed that the woman, who had recently escaped an asylum, is Anne Catherick, a child who formerly lived near the Fairlie family. The reader also finds out that Anne is terminally ill.
Collins based this central topic on the true story of a woman falsely imprisoned in a French asylum in 1776.
When Glyde's attempt to inherit Laura's fortune fails, the men hatch a plan to swap Laura with her lookalike, Anne Catherick. In this way, Laura is placed in an asylum, and the men are free to claim her fortune once Anne dies of her illness. The swap is successful, and the men steak the money. Even though Laura eventually escapes the asylum, she is now only known as Anne Catherick.
Fig.2 - Thomas Eyre Macklin is one of many illustrators who offer visual interpretations of scenes from The Woman in White
Hartright embarks on a complex, challenging journey to discover the truth about the evil scheme and restore Laura's identity. The reader feels at one with the detective as he sleuths through the evidence, picking apart each perplexing detail and working towards a resolution.
For this reason, the novel is often considered a predecessor to the detective novel. Hartright applies many of the deductive techniques that later private detectives would replicate.
To save Laura, Walter discovers dark secrets about the wicked men and uses them to his advantage. When Glyde attempts to burn incriminating evidence, he dies in the resulting blaze. Fosco, the remaining villain, is forced to write out a full confession when Hartright discovers he is hiding from a society that he has betrayed. With both men neutralised, the day is saved, and Fosco's confession restores Laura's true identity.
Despite its status as an early pioneer of detective fiction, the novel contains all the features of a traditional gothic novel. The mysterious asylums, unsettling women in white, monstrous villains and unlawful cities mean that the book is as closely tied to gothic classics as it is to the contemporary whodunnit.
Like his good friend Charles Dickens, Collins was an outspoken social critic. This criticism is especially present in The Woman in White. During the Georgian period, women had minimal legal rights. They could not vote, and they were at the mercy of the men in their families when it came to property, finances, and inheritance. In the novel, Collins focuses on this inequality and shows its unjustness. He also uses the novel to address key themes surrounding disability and unjust institutionalisation.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone is driven by its protagonists' methods of investigation and deduction to solve a crime and can be considered one of the first detective novels written in English to rise to fame.
The detective novel begins with the theft of a magnificent jewel at a country house, which takes the best of Scotland Yard (in the form of Sergeant Cuff) and science (Dr Candy’s assistant Ezra Jennings) two years to solve. During the big reveal in the very last pages, Collins satirises the double standards of Victorian morality.
The Moonstone is an epistolary novel that discusses themes around:
- Colonialism and Imperialism (specifically the impact of British colonialism of India)
- Race and Identity (specifically the idea of "passing" and the complexities of mixed-race identity that the character Godfrey Ablewhite represents when he tries to pass himself as a "white" man)
- Crime and Punishment
- Gender and Sexuality
- Memory and Trauma
- Reputation and Consequence
An epistolary novel is a novel comprised of letters, documents, newspaper clippings and/or diary entries.
Did you know? In many of Wilkie Collins' texts, including The Woman in White and The Moonstone, laudanum plays an important role – just as it did in Collins’ own life.
Wilkie Collins: short stories
Wilkie Collins also wrote over 50 short stories during his lifetime, including 'The Frozen Deep' (1874) which Collins based on a play of the same title that he wrote and staged in collaboration with Charles Dickens in 1856.
Did you know? The themes in The Frozen Deep served as a basis for Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859).
The short story is based on the disappearance of two Royal Navy ships, the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus during the mid-19th century. The crew attempted to find and traverse the Northwest Passage (an ocean passage in the Arctic Ocean connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) as a possible trade route, but the ships became trapped in the ice. To counter the accusations that the stranded crew on board the ships resorted to cannibalism before their deaths, Dickens and Collins' story told another tale of moral triumph.
Other short stories by Wilkie Collins include 'A Terribly Strange Bed' (1852), 'A Stolen Letter' (1854), and 'The Yellow Mask' (1855), all of which were initially published in another of Charles Dickens' publications, Household Words.
Wilkie Collins - Key takeaways
- Wilkie Collins (1824–89) was a British author who wrote sensation novels.
- Sensation novels were a subgenre of the Gothic novel and aimed to instil 'sensations' within their readers, such as terror, excitement, and shock.
- Wilkie Collins' most famous works include The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1864).
- Wilkie Collins met Dickens in 1851, and they had a lifelong friendship and collaboration.
- Like his friend Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins was also very interested in social criticism and often used satire to critique elite society, the treatment of women, and unjust institutionalisation
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Frequently Asked Questions about Wilkie Collins
Where is Wilkie Collins buried?
Collins is buried in Kensal Green Cemetary.
Did Wilkie Collins marry?
Although Wilkie Collins never married, he lived with Caroline Graves and at the same time had a family with Martha Rudd.
Is The Woman in White a true story?
According to Millais, Wilkie Collins did meet a woman in white which may have partly inspired the story.
What was Wilkie Collins prescribed to target ill health?
Wilkie Collins was prescribed laudanum (extract of opium dissolved in alcohol).
When was The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins published?
The Woman in White was published in volume form in 1860.
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