Wilkie Collins

08 January 1824 - 23 September 1889

Standard Name: Collins, Wilkie

Used Form: William Wilkie Collins

Used Form: W. Wilkie Collins

Best remembered for his sensational fiction of the 1860s, WC was, in the course of his forty-year writing career, the author of many ingeniously-plotted novels, as well as a writer of plays (some in collaboration with Charles Dickens ), short stories, a biography of his father, and a travel book. Innovative narrative technique is a feature of his work, along with legal and social critique. His writings are also notable, in a literary culture that viewed physical difference as a marker of moral failure, for their sympathetic representation of disability.

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Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Education	John Strange Winter	After this she completed her education at home. Although even in this context she says, I was not well educated, for I never would learn, Bainton, George, editor. The Art of Authorship. J. Clarke, 1890. 24 she also described herself as having always been from...
Education	Jean Plaidy	Eleanor Alice Burford (later JP ) learned how to read at four years old: I do feel that books were my thing, right from the word go, she told an interviewer in 1991. Bennett, Catherine. “The Prime of Miss Jean Plaidy”. The Guardian, pp. 23 - 4. 23 She...
Education	Henry Handel Richardson	The child Ethel Richardson was a great reader. She identified with male fictional characters, and cherished three books which her father gave her almost on his death-bed: The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan , Robinson Crusoe...
Family and Intimate relationships	Anne Thackeray Ritchie	Following his death Charles Collins (Wilkie 's brother), with his wife (the former Kate Dickens ) and family, were the main sources of support for ATR and her sister. Between 1,500 and 2,000 mourners...
Friends, Associates	Charles Dickens	As one of the leading literary figures of the period, CD had an extensive social network. His early acquaintances in publishing included Richard Bentley , William Harrison Ainsworth , and John Forster (who later became...
Friends, Associates	Lucy Walford	LW had many friends among literary people and those who moved in literary circles. She discussed the books of her childhood with Reginald Palgrave , who shared many of her early reading experiences, and Wilkie Collins
Friends, Associates	Jane Loudon	As well as horticultural and artistic friends and associates, JL and her husband had literary friends, who included Robert Chambers and his wife Anne , Elizabeth Gaskell , Mary Howitt , Julia Kavanagh , Charles Dickens
Friends, Associates	Frances Power Cobbe	FPC 's wide London circle included Walter Bagehot , Frances Sarah Colenso and her husband Bishop Colenso (while they were home from Africa), Henry Fawcett , Charles Kingsley , W. E. H. Lecky , Sir Charles Lyell
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Elizabeth Braddon	Its criminal heroine or anti-heroine, a blonde and childlike paragon of Victorian femininity, is a villainous counter-type of the passive, fair-haired Laura Fairlie, heroine of Wilkie Collins 's The Woman in White, which MEB
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Elizabeth Braddon	MEB infused a touch of poetry more literally by frequent allusion to works by Tennyson , including Mariana, The Deserted House, and The Lotos-Eaters. Her trademark use of other authors' texts as...
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Angela Dickens	MAD published her fiction in stand-alone volumes as well as journals and magazines throughout her career. Assessing the quality of her work, John Sutherland claims that her style showed the strong influence of Wilkie Collins
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Elizabeth Braddon	Charlotte's Inheritance treats the Stock Exchange and a poisoner based on art critic and murderer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright . Both these books, according to Wolff, reveal the influence of Collins and Balzac , about whose...
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Elizabeth Braddon	It opens in medias res aboard a steamer travelling from Cape Town to London, with the chance encounter of childhood friends. These are Arnold Wentworth, alias Alfred Wildover, the prodigal son of a gentleman...
Intertextuality and Influence	Charlotte Chanter	Critic John Sutherland discerns the influence of Wilkie Collins on the novel's plot. Certainly the figure of the mysterious woman in black who aims to avenge herself on her husband's destroyers recalls the description of...
Intertextuality and Influence	Harriet Martineau	According to HM 's Autobiography, she drew inspiration for the setting and heroine of a later story (The Hamlets, part of Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated) from seeing William Collins 's...

Timeline

4 May 1799

Forces in Mysore, India, opposing British rule were finally defeated at the second capture of Seringapatam.

April 1863

Henry Mansel in the Quarterly Review attacked sensation novels as preaching to the nerves and as indications of a wide-spread corruption, of which they are in part both the effect and the cause; called into...

1876

John Maxwell sold Belgravia to Chatto and Windus , ending Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's association with the monthly.

28 September 1883

A meeting of authors, chaired by Walter Besant , gathered to found the Company of Authors, later the Society of Authors , to improve the earning prospects of writers and lobby for copyright protection.