Wilkie Collins

When orphaned Emily Brown runs out of money and has to leave Miss Ladd's school for young ladies, her life becomes a mystery novel. The mystery that reveals itself to her has to do with the murder of her father. . . . A teacher Sarah Jethro, dismissed when her references are discovered to be forged, says her good byes to Emily -- and reveals that she had once known Emily's father but refuses to elaborate. Masterful drawing Teacher Alban Morris is in love with Emily. Emily secures a position in Northumberland as secretary to Sir Jervis Redwood, and when Mrs. Rook of his staff comes to collect Emily, she's astounded to see that Emily wears her father's locket recording his death on 30 September 1877, the same date as the murder at the Hand-in-Hand Inn in Hampshire. Mrs. Rook and her husband owned the inn -- until it was forced to close after the gruesome murder of Emily's father. When Mrs. Rook is hurt in a railway accident, she confesses that she stole the bloodstained pocket-book from Emily's already dead father. The pocket-book still has a note from Miss Jethro containing only the words "I say no." . . .

Blind Love is Wilkie Collins's final novel. Although he did not live to complete the work, he left detailed plans for the last third of this absorbingly plotted novel which were faithfully executed by his colleague, the popular author Walter Besant. The novel is set during the Irish Land War of the early 1880s and tells the story of Iris Henley, an independent young woman who marries the "wild" Lord Harry Norland, a member of an Irish secret society, and becomes unhappily drawn into a conspiracy plot. The Broadview edition of Blind Love includes a critical introduction and primary source materials that address the novel's focus on movements for Irish independence. Appendices include newspaper accounts of Ireland during the Land War and of the fraud case on which Collins based his story, articles reacting to Collins's sudden death, Punch cartoons depicting the English attitudes toward the Irish, and contemporary reviews.

The girl named Mary -- they called her Madonna, and she was deaf and dumb and beautiful as a painting by Raphael -- was a mystery. The Blyths adopted her from a kindly old woman connected to a traveling circus, but everyone knew she wasn't from circus folk. All they DID know about her identity was that she'd lost her hearing in an accident, and the proprietor of the circus had treated her horribly, and, and . . . and in her cache of secret personal private things, she owned one thing as precious to her as life itself: a bracelet made of brown human hair with the initials MG tied into it. The Blyths kept it locked in a bureau for fear that Mary's unknown family might one day claim her. . . .