Who Was Wilkie Collins?
Wilkie Collins is considered to be the most successful to the followers of Dickens. At one time, about 1860, his vogue was nearly as great as that of Dickens himself. Collins was born in London, and was a son of a famous painter. After a few years spent in business he took to the study of the law, but very soon abandoned that for literature. He was a versatile man, dabbling much in journalism and play-writing.
Collins specialized in the mystery novel, to which he sometimes added a spice of the supernatural. In many of his books the story, which is often ingeniously complicated, is unfolded by letters or the narratives of persons actually engaged in the events. To a certain extent this method is cumbrous, But it allowed Collins to draw his characters with much wealth of detail. His characters are often described in the Dickensian manner of emphasizing some humour or peculiarity. He wrote more than twenty-five novels, the most popular being The Dead Secret (1857), The Woman in White (1860) the most successful of them all, No Name (1862), and The Moon-stone (1868). The Moonstone is one of the earliest and the best of the great multitude of detective stories that now crowd the popular press. Collins was in addition one of the first authors to devote himself to the short magazine story; After Dark is a collection of some of his best pieces, linked together by a slight thread of connecting narrative.
