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 | | | Wilkie Collins, as depicted by Vanity Fair in 1872. |
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| 1/8/1824 |
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Collins, Crime & Sergeant Cuff
On this day in 1824 the mystery novelist Wilkie Collins was born. Collins's "gaslight thrillers" were as popular among Victorian readers as the books of his friend, Charles Dickens; two of them, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) have not only stayed in print but grown in reputation. Crime historians say much is owed to characters such as Sergeant Cuff, and to his stylish back-of-my-hand. |
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Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
An educational website for fans of mystery and detection stories offers information and commentary on selected stories, and an explanation their place within the genre. It includes a brief review of several works by Collins, including "A Plot in Private Life," "John Jago's Ghost," and The Haunted Hotel.
"The Haunted Hotel is more of a detective story than a ghost story, despite its title. The ghostly manifestations are relatively few in number, and pretty short lived. They are mainly concerned with providing clues to the murder, clues which another author (or Collins himself in a different work) could easily have provided through pure detective work. Formally, the work adheres very closely to the canons of detective fiction. The solution has affinities with the ending of The Woman in White, but here it forms a solution to the central mystery situation of the book, whereas in Woman in White it formed more of a surprising plot twist. Hotel falls much more closely within what in the twentieth century will be the canonical plot structure of the mystery novel, with a mysterious situation, investigation by various characters, and the final detailed revelation of the surprising facts behind the crime." |  | Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (New York University)
Offers synopses and commentary from a medical perspective on the novels Armadale, Hide and Seek, The Moonstone, The New Magdalen, and Poor Miss Finch.
"Blind women in Victorian fiction are habitually excluded from marriage plots and assiduously prevented from bearing children, undoubtedly because of Victorian anxieties about hereditary transmission of blindness. Given this cultural context, Collins's novel is remarkable. Poor Miss Finch represents the most normalized of Collins's many representations of physical disability." | | Online Books Page
Find electronic texts of The Moonstone, The Woman in White, After Dark, Armadale, The Black Robe, The Evil Genius, Jezebel's Daughter, Man and Wife, and many other works. | | The Victorian Web
Find a biography and essays that examine the scientific and religious influences in the works of Wilkie Collins. Also features a biography, and literary criticism and analysis of genre, mode and style, major themes, characterization, use of imagery and symbolism.
"Collins's spare, lean prose lacked the resonance, the poetry, and the allusions of Dickens's. Despite the stylistic differences, throughout the 1860s Collins enjoyed a literary celebrity and an affluence almost equal to Dickens's because the Victorian reading public appreciated his subtlety of characterization, his realistic psychological portraiture, and his ingeniously involved plotting. For the elder novelist, plot arose from the interaction of deeply felt characters; for the younger novelist, an apparently random chance (in fact, Providence) outside individual characters' control seems to animate and direct the plot." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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