Wilkie Collins : A Literary Life

Wilkie Collins: A Literary Life draws on recently available business and personal correspondence to establish a fresh portrait of one of Victorian Britain's busiest authors. The book takes in Collins's notoriously complicated private life as well as his work as a professional author in the changing world of Victorian publishing.

This new volume in the Literary Lives series focuses on the career of the popular Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), and provides a new account of his professional life in the literary world of nineteenth-century Britain. It draws on recently available business and personal correspondence to establish a fresh portrait of one of Victorian Britain''s busiest authors, taking in Collins''s notoriously complicated private life and his friendship with Charles Dickens, as well his work as journalist, reviewer and playwright. New insights are given into the international dimensions of Collins''s career. There is discussion of Collins''s best-known novels, including The Woman in White, The Moonstone and Armadale, but attention is also given to lesser-known works and to Collins''s plays, which have long been neglected. The volume will appeal to all students of Wilkie Collins and also to those interested in the literary world of Victorian Britain and the social and business networks which lay at its heart.