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.
DLS
supplied another introduction in 1944, to the Everyman's Library edition of Wilkie Collins
's The Moonstone.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Literary responses
Marie Belloc Lowndes
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...
It was published at Dublin in 1789, and held the stage well during the early nineteenth century: October-November 1824 saw two rival productions at different theatres. Dickens
directed the production of a much-revised version in...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Gaskell
Illustrated by George du Maurier
, this serial ran alongside fiction by Trollope
and Thackeray
, and shared the lead with Collins
's Armadale. EG
received £2,000 for the serialisation (as compared to Collins's...
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...
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens's romance about the French Revolution set largely in Paris, appeared in 1859 in several forms:first serially in his new journal All the Year Round, and, overlapping...
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
Material Conditions of Writing
Mary Angela Dickens
The journal All the Year Round, founded by MAD
's grandfather
and then edited by her father, was one of the first and most significant platforms for her short stories and serialized novels. Other...
