William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. Mad Monkton is a bizarre ghost story. It is said that a strain of hereditary madness blights the Monkton family, heirs to the huge domain of Wincot Abbey. Rumours in the neighbourhood are that Alfred, the youngest scion, has inherited this insanity. His odd behaviour certainly points that way. Alfred is engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Ada Elmslie. But at the very moment when various obstacles to the match are overcome, Alfred suddenly departs for Italy on what appears to be a wild goose chase, seeking the corpse of his disreputable uncle, who is believed to have been killed in a duel. But what could have driven Alfred to do this? And why does he so desperately want to find his late uncle's remains? The mystery is bizarre and gruesome...and the tale takes on one weird twist after another.
Author
A close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March 1851 until Dickens' death in June 1870, William Wilkie Collins was one of the best known, best loved, and, for a time, best paid of Victorian fiction writers. But after his death, his reputation declined as Dickens' bloomed. Now, Collins is being given more critical and popular attention than he has received for 50 years. Most of his books are in print, and all are now in e-text. He is studied widely; new film, television, and radio versions of some of his books have been made; and all of his letters have been published. However, there is still much to be discovered about this superstar of Victorian fiction. Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins' family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole's boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand. In 1846, Collins became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851, although he never practised. It was in 1848, a year after the death of his father, that he published his first book, 'The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A'., to good reviews. The 1860s saw Collins' creative high-point, and it was during this decade that he achieved fame and critical acclaim, with his four major novels, 'The Woman in White' (1860), 'No Name' (1862), 'Armadale' (1866) and 'The Moonstone' (1868). 'The Moonstone', is seen by many as the first true detective novel T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels ..." in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.
