Wilkie Collins

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Lore & Background

Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, London, to painter William Collins and Harriet Geddes. He moved with his family to Italy at age twelve, living there and in France for two years, learning Italian and French. After working as a tea merchant for more than five years, his first published novel Antonina came out in February 1850, leading to a friendship and mentorship with Charles Dickens after an introduction by painter Augustus Egg in March 1851. Collins's work appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round, and they collaborated on drama and fiction, including the play The Frozen Deep and the story "A House to Let." By the 1860s, Collins gained financial stability and an international following, with The Woman in White reaching an eighth edition by November 1860. In the 1870s and 1880s, after becoming addicted to the opium he took for his gout, his health declined and the reception of his artistic output suffered. Collins criticized the institution of marriage. He had relationships with two women: widow Caroline Graves, living with her for most of his life and treating her daughter as his own, and the younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.

Reader's Guide

Wilkie Collins's significance lies in his pioneering contributions to the mystery and detective novel. The Woman in White (1860) was a landmark sensation novel, while The Moonstone (1868) established ground rules for the modern detective novel and is considered an early police procedural. According to Collins's biographer Melisa Klimaszewski, the four novels he published in the 1860s—The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone—are the best and most enduring of his career, securing him an international reputation and financial stability. Collins's use of legal knowledge, gained from his studies at Lincoln's Inn (entered 1846, called to the bar in 1851), added depth to his plots. His addiction to opium, used to treat gout that first attacked in early 1853, affected his later work and health. Despite this, his innovations in plotting and genre have had a lasting impact on crime and mystery fiction.

Did You Know?

• Collins's first novel, Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was, was rejected by publisher Chapman and Hall in 1845 and remained unpublished during his lifetime.
• At school, a bully forced Collins to tell him a story every night before allowing him to sleep, which Collins later said first awakened his power of storytelling.
• Collins acted alongside Charles Dickens in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play Not So Bad As We Seem in May 1851, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the audience.
• Collins's play No Thoroughfare, co-written with Dickens, enjoyed a run of 200 nights at the Adelphi Theatre starting 26 December 1867.
• Collins's first attack of gout, a condition he would suffer from for the rest of his life, occurred in early 1853 during the writing of Hide and Seek.