Catherine Peters

Describes the life of the nineteenth century novelist, analyzes his most important works, and discusses his outlook on the world

Shifting Worlds of Imagination and Reality

Thackeray's Universe

Wilkie Collins

The moonstone is a yellow diamond of unearthly beauty brought from India and given to Rachel Verrinder as an eighteenth birthday present, but the fabled diamond carries with it a terrible curse.

The Moonstone

In this major biography, Catherine Peters explores the complicated life of Wilkie Collins, the greatest of the Victorian "Sensation" novelists and author of the famous Woman in White and The Moonstone. An intimate of Dickens and of the Pre-Raphaelites Holman Hunt and Millais, Collins was called the "king of inventors" by his publisher. On the surface, he was charming, unpretentious, and extremely good company, beloved by men and women. Beneath this façade, however, he was a complex and haunted man, addicted to laudanum, and his powerful, often violent novels revealed a dark side of Victorian life. He supported two common-law wives and their children, and as Peters shows, he provoked scandal by refusing to cloak his complicated love affairs in the customary hypocritical pretense of the period. Having discovered a hitherto unknown autobiography by Wilkie Collins's mother, Peters draws on this document and on thousands of Collins's unpublished letters to create this provocative picture of his life and times. She describes in detail the saga of his exhausting struggle for better copyright protection for authors, especially for English authors in the United States. She has also studied the manuscripts of his novels, plays, and stories, including those which he did not complete, finding that some of his neglected novels turn out to be much more interesting than most readers realize today. This edition of the book has been supplemented to include an appendix describing Collins's "Tahitian" novel. Written when he was twenty, the manuscript of this work, Ioláni, was thought to have disappeared, but it has recently been rediscovered and sold to a private collector. For any Collins enthusiast, or for anyone interested in the literary history of the Victorian period, The King of Inventors provides a vivid account of Collins's unusual personal life in the context of his literary and artistic friendships and of newly revealed facts about the two women with whom he shared his "double life." Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A Life of Wilkie Collins

The King of Inventors

Andrew Gasson

This is the most comprehensive work ever published on the life, work, and influences of Wilkie Collins. Interest in Collins has increased over recent years as his novels have gained popularity and his central role in 19th-century fiction, as a collaborator with writers such as Dickens and the father of the detective novel, has been recognized. The Guide is much more accessible than a biography: entries are arranged alphabetically and fully cross-referenced, and the text is complemented by over 200 illustrations, many of them never before published. Special attention is paid to bibliographical and publishing details.

Catherine Peters

About

Books

Join the club