William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linendraper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In his novel Basil Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world. The Basil's secret and UN-CONSUMMATED marriage to the linendraper's sexually precocious daughter lead to the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death.

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In his novel Basil Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world. The Basil's secret and UN-CONSUMMATED marriage to the linendraper's sexually precocious daughter lead to the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In Basil’s secret and unconsummated marriage to the linendraper’s sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linendraper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices tells the story of sightseeing trip to Cumberland of Charles Dickens and his friend, the rising star of literature, Wilkie Collins. Through their fictional counterparts, they relentlessly satirize. Dickens' maniacal energy and Collins' idleness. The result is an exuberant diary of a journey and a rare insight into one of literature's most famed and intriguing friendships.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices tells the story of sightseeing trip to Cumberland of Charles Dickens and his friend, the rising star of literature, Wilkie Collins. Through their fictional counterparts, they relentlessly satirize. Dickens' maniacal energy and Collins' idleness. The result is an exuberant diary of a journey and a rare insight into one of literature's most famed and intriguing friendships.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer.In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer.In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Wilkie Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the 19th century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world.

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. This volume contains some of his mysterious stories. John Jago's Ghost, is a novella based on the Boorn Brothers murder case. The Family Secret and Dream Woman are classic mysteries. And Mad Monkton is a bizarre ghost story. Collins's works were classified at the time as "sensation novels", a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.

An innovative novel featuring an astonishingly wicked female villain, Wilkie Collins's Armadale was regarded by T.S. Eliot as 'the best of [his] romances'. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland. When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money - and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction'. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian 'sensation novels'. John Sutherland's introduction illustrated how Wilkie Collins drew on scandalous newspaper headlines and on new technology particularly the penny post and the telegraph - to lend extra pace and veracity to his tale. This edition also contains notes, further reading and an appendix on stage dramatisations of Armadale. Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London in 1824, the eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. In 1846 he was entered to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he gained the knowledge that was to give him much of the material for his writing. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep. Of his novels, Collins is best remembered for The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868).

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel, which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law.

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel, which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law.

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel, which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law.