The Woman in White [antikvár]

The Woman in White by wilkie collins Wilkie collins (1824-89). Although he was one of the most popular novelists of his day, Wilkie Collins's reputation now rests on his novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone. Exploring the realms of mystery, suspense and crime he is often regarded as the inventor of the detective story. The eldest son of the landscape artist William Collins RA, Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824. Educated for a few years at priváté schools in London, he was thirteen years old when the family moved to Italy, and it is here that he gained his real education. Rebelling against his father's strict religious code and conservative values, Wilkie Collins refused to settle into life either in the tea business or as a barrister and remained adamant that he would write. His first book, a biography of his father was published in 1848. A close friend of and travelling companion to Charles Dickens, with whom he spent much time during the 1850s, Collins wrote regularly for Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round. The two men shared a keen interest in the theatre, as wel! as in London's high life, and Dickens acted in two early melodramas that Wilkie Collins wrote. With the serialization of The Woman in White in 1860, Collins's popularity grew to such an extent that queues förmed to buy the next instalment and Gladstone cancelled a theatre engagement to carry on reading it. He followed this success with the novels No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and the highly successful The Moonstone (1868). Collins continued to write until his death, producing fifteen more novels, which although of deteriorating quality were still well received. Collins never married and his priváté life remains a mixture of the romantic and the raffish. Living with his mother until he was thirty-two, Collins then left to set up home with a young woman, Caroline Graves, and her daughter by another man. Remaining with Caroline on and off for the rest of his life, he alsó fathered three illegitimate children by Martha Rudd. This scandalous arrangement