Wilkie Collins

Author · 120 books

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.

Series

Marvel Classics Comics

Series · 16 books

The Best Short Stories of All Time book cover 1

The Best Short Stories of All Time

Series · 8 books

Books

100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature #2

2020

50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die

Vol. 3

2020

50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol

2019

A Fair Penitent

1857

A Rogue's Life

1856

After Dark

1856

Antología universal del relato fantástico

2013

Antonina, or The Fall of Rome

1850

Armadale

1866

Basil

1852

Biter Bit and Other Stories

1858

Blind Love

1890

Bloody, Bloody Christmas – The Greatest Christmas Thrillers & Mysteries

The Blue Carbuncle, The Silver Hatchet, A Christmas Tragedy, The Abbot's Ghost, Told After Supper…

2019

Blow Up with the Brig

1859

Classic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M.R. James, Charles Dickens and Others

1930

Complete Works of Wilkie Collins

2011

Cuentos de amor victorianos

2006

Cuentos victorianos de Navidad

2017

Deep, Dark & Unsettling

100+ Gothic Classics in One Edition: Novels, Tales and Poems: The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Tell-Tale Heart, Wuthering Heights, ... Rhine, The Headless Horseman & many more

2018