Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Wilkie Collins
-
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.
It was reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement by Walter de la Mare
, who wrote appreciatively of the faint arresting strangeness, the sense of sinister events impending, which is present from the opening sentence...
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...
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...
Reception
Jean Plaidy
In 1991, JP
said of Mistress of Mellyn: This was the sort of book that I loved to write, because I had read so much of the BrontësCharlotte BrontëAnne Brontë
, over and over again, and...
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...
Textual Production
Dorothy L. Sayers
DLS
supplied another introduction in 1944, to the Everyman's Library edition of Wilkie Collins
's The Moonstone.
Reception
Harriet Smythies
In April 1863 HS
's novel The Daily Governess; or, Self-Dependence (1861) was included as part of Henry Mansel
's attack on sensation novels in the Quarterly Review. Although HS
was not a major...
Literary responses
Emily Spender
The Athenæum reviewer, Almaric Rumsey
, guessed the novelist's gender from the use of the bigamy motif, which he felt to be obviously derivative from more talented novelists (Wilkie Collins
's recently published The...
Occupation
Helen Taylor
F. A. Hayek
speculates that she played a small role in Wilkie Collins
' The Red Vial on its opening night at the Olympic Theatre
in October 1858.
Hayek, Friedrich Augustus von et al. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; Their Correspondence [i.e. Friendship] and Subsequent Marriage. University of Chicago Press.
260-1
Occupation
Frances Eleanor Trollope
Frances Eleanor Ternan (later FET
), her sisters Maria
and Ellen
, and her mother Frances
, performed with Dickens
in Wilkie Collins
's The Frozen Deep, which opened at the New Free Trade Hall in Manchester.
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. HarperCollins.
786-8, 790
Reception
Queen Victoria
Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands outsold many books that appeared in 1868, including Wilkie Collins
's The Moonstone, Robert Browning
's Ring and the Book, and Louisa May Alcott
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
Reception
Lucy Walford
After the publication of Recollections of a Scottish NovelistLW
decided that there were still stories in her mind that rank among the great days of my life, yet which did not fit in with...
Textual Production
Michelene Wandor
Novels adapted by MW
are not restricted to those by women. Works by male writers she has revised for broadcasting include Kipps by H. G. Wells
, aired on Radio 4
in 1984 and runner-up...
