Wilkie Collins

Allan Armadale's deathbed confession to the murder went to his executors -- intended for his son his young son, to be delivered when the boy came of age. It included a warning never to contact people connected with the confession. . . .

Armadale

The first and greatest of the bestselling Victorian thrillers known as 'sensation novels', The Woman in White opens with a chilling encounter between drawing teacher Walter Hartright and a ghostly female figure on a moonlit road. From this moment Walter is drawn into a terrifying world of intrigue, crime, disguise and insanity, as he tries to save his beautiful pupil Laura from the sinister plans of Sir Percival Glyde and the 'Napoleon of Crime', Count Fosco, in one of the most gripping plots in English fiction.

The Woman in White

A major precursor of the modern mystery novel - with multiple narrators, a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle - The Moonstone sets out the tale of a large Indian diamond that carries a terrible curse. When Rachel Verinder is given the Moonstone for her birthday, its theft at her party triggers a series of increasingly horrific events that seem set to ruin everyone she loves. In this classic of the Victorian sensation genre, only Sergeant Cuff's famous detective skills offer a glimpse of hope for the diamond's helpless victims.

The Moonstone

A collection of strange stories from Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. It also includes the novella, The Haunted Hotel, a combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of waterways and death.

The Haunted Hotel and Other Strange Tales

Three years ago, her husband stood accused of murder -- and the verdict that came in from the jury was the Scottish Verdict, Not Proven. The jury had not evidence enough to convict him -- nor enough to comfortably exonerate him. Eustace could not bear the weight of her discovery; he fled to the continent, to live in anonymity. But Valeria knew her husband, and she loved him. She knew he was innocent, too, with the sort of intuition that guides the lucky flawlessly. And she set out to prove it to the world. * Valeria Woodville is one of English literature's earliest women detectives -- that makes the novel historically remarkable. But it's also a great fun mystery, full of plot and circumsance, and a rogue's gallery of odd Dickensian characters. The Law and the Lady is as remarkable a novel today as it was when it was first published in 1875.

The Law and the Lady

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Basil

An eminent doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane? When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered. In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies. How are these little mysteries connected? Spend the night in Room 14 of Veniceâe(tm)s finest hotel, and find out the truth âe" if you dareâe¦ INCLUDES THE GHOST STORY âe~THE DREAM WOMANâe(tm)

The Haunted Hotel

'The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.' One of the earliest works of 'detective' fiction with a narrative woven together from multiple characters, Wilkie Collins partly based his infamous novel on a real-life eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. In 1859, the story caused a sensation with its readers, hooking their attention with the ghostly first scene where the mysterious 'Woman in White' Anne Catherick comes across Walter Hartright. Chilling, suspenseful and tense in mood, the novel remains as emotive for its readers today as when it was first published.

Collins Classics - The Woman in White

This early work by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1885. 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 practiced. 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, meanwhile 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." Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.

Mrs. Zant and the Ghost ('The Ghost's Touch') (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and writer of short stories. He was hugely popular in his time, and wrote 27 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and over 100 pieces of non-fiction work. His best-known works are The Woman in White (1860), The Moonstone (1868), Armadale (1866) and No Name (1862). His works were classified at the time as 'sensation novels', a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective fiction and suspense fiction. He also wrote penetratingly on the plight of women and on the social and domestic issues of his time. His novel, No Name combined social commentary - the absurdity of the law as it applied to children of unmarried parents - with a densely-plotted revenge thriller. Amongst his other works are: Basil (1852), Hide and Seek (1854), After the Dark (1856), The Frozen Deep (1857), The Queen of Hearts (1859), Man and Wife (1870), The New Magdalen (1873), The Law and the Lady (1875), The Two Destinies (1876), and A Rogue's Life (1879).

A Mystery in Four Narratives

The Dream Woman

Based on the doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, The Frozen Deep is a dramatic tale of vengeance and self-sacrifice. Exchanging vows of love with sailor Frank Aldersley the night before his departure, Clara Burnham is haunted by the memory of Richard Wardour, and his mistaken belief that they will one day marry. On different ships, the two men have no cause to meet—until disaster strikes and they find themselves united by their battle for survival. When they learn of their rivalry, there follows an act of pure selflessness, making The Frozen Deep one of Collins' most moving and tragic works. The author of The Moonstone, The Woman in White, and Who Killed Zebedee?, Wilkie Collins is widely regarded as the originator of the English detective novel.

The Frozen Deep

Charles Dickens

Elizabeth Gaskell

This collaborative short story brings together the creative talents of four of the Victorian era's most popular fiction writers -- Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Anne Procter each contributed a section to the work. When an elderly woman notices signs of activity at a supposedly abandoned home in her neighborhood, she devises a scheme to get to the bottom of the mysterious goings-on.

A House to Let

A delightful tale of thwarted ambition and forbidden love, A Rogue’s Life follows the fortunes of an endearing young man. Proffering his own take on picaresque storytelling—and with many a grain of truth for twenty-somethings today—this is Wilkie Collins at his entertaining best. Propelled into society by his ever-hopeful father, Frank Softly is introduced to a variety of professions in order to make his fortune. Not industrious by nature, however, Frank finds working life a challenge, and by his 25th birthday, he has failed medicine, portrait-painting, caricaturing, and even forgery. Disenchanted with life, he despairs of ever finding something to commit to—until he meets Alicia Dulcifer and her inexplicably wealthy father. The author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins is widely regarded as the originator of the detective novel.

A Rogue's Life

‘When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else’ The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel’s household is above suspicion. Hailed by T. S. Eliot as ‘the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels’, The Moonstone is a marvellously taut and intricate tale of mystery, in which facts and memory can prove treacherous and not everyone is as they first appear. Sandra Kemp’s introduction examines The Moonstone as a work of Victorian sensation fiction and an early example of the detective genre, and discusses the technique of multiple narrators, the role of opium, and Collins’s sources and autobiographical references.

Sir Walter Besant

Iris Henley's blind love for Lord Harry Norland leads inexorably to fiendish crime.Based on a real-life case, enlivened by Collins' intricate plotting and colorful characters. 16 full-page illustrations.

Blind Love

Having previously tried my hand at short serial stories (collected and reprinted in _After Dark, _ and _The Queen of Hearts), _ I ventured on my first attempt, in this book, to produce a sustained work of fiction, intended for periodical publication during many successive weeks. The experiment proved successful both in this country and in America. Two of the characters which appear in these pages -- "Rosamond," and "Uncle Joseph" -- had the good fortune to find friends everywhere who took a hearty liking to them. A more elaborately drawn personage in the story -- "Sarah Leeson" -- was, I think, less generally understood. The idea of tracing, in this character, the influence of a heavy responsibility on a naturally timid woman, whose mind was neither strong enough to bear it, nor bold enough to drop it altogether, was a favorite idea with me, at the time, and is so much a favorite still, that I privately give "Sarah Leeson" the place of honor in the little portrait-gallery which my story contains. Perhaps, in saying this, I am only acknowledging, in other words, that the parents of literary families share the well-known inconsistencies of parents in general, and are sometimes unreasonably fond of the child who has always given them the most trouble. -- Wilkie Collins, _January, 1861_

Wilkie Collins

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