Wilkie Collins

An exploration of 'destined spirits' and supernatural visions, with a romantic twist. William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. His best-known works are The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868). The last is considered the first modern English detective novel. Born into the family of painter William Collins in London, he lived with his family in Italy and France as a child and learned French and Italian. He worked as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, was published in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend, mentor and collaborator. Some of Collins's works were first published in Dickens' journals All the Year Round and Household Words and the two collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins published his best known works in the 1860s, achieved financial stability and an international reputation. During that time he began suffering from gout. After taking opium for the pain, he developed an addiction. During the 1870s and 1880s the quality of his writing declined along with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage and never married; he split his time between Caroline Graves, except for a two-year separation, and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children. Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, London, the son of a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes. Named after his father, he swiftly became known by his second name, which honoured his godfather, David Wilkie. The family moved to Pond Street, Hampstead, in 1826. In 1828 Collins's brother Charles Allston Collins was born. Between 1829 and 1830, the Collins family moved twice, first to Hampstead Square and then to Porchester Terrace, Bayswater. Wilkie and Charles received their early education from their mother at home. The Collins family was deeply religious, and Collins's mother enforced strict church attendance on her sons, which Wilkie disliked. In 1835, Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy. From 1836 to 1838, he lived with his parents in Italy and France, which made a great impression on him. He learned Italian while the family was in Italy and began learning French, in which he would eventually become fluent. From 1838 to 1840, he attended the Reverend Cole's private boarding school in Highbury, where he was bullied by a boy who would force Collins to tell him a story before allowing him to go to sleep. "It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware... When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure", Collins later said. In 1840 the family moved to 85 Oxford Terrace, Bayswater. In late 1840, he left school and was apprenticed as a clerk to the firm of tea merchants Antrobus & Co, owned by a friend of Wilkie's father. He disliked his clerical work but remained employed by the company for more than five years. Collins's first story The Last Stage Coachman, was published in the Illuminated Magazine in August 1843. In 1844 he travelled to Paris with Charles Ward. That same year he wrote his first novel, Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance, which was submitted to Chapman and Hall but rejected in 1845. The novel remained unpublished during his lifetime. Collins said of it: "My youthful imagination ran riot among the noble savages, in scenes which caused the respectable British publisher to declare that it was impossible to put his name on the title page of such a novel." It was during the writing of this novel that Collins's father first learned that his assumptions that Wilkie would follow him in becoming a painter were mistaken....

A tale of criminality, almost revolting from its domestic horrors.

A stunning hardback collection of more than 35 of the greatest crime stories ever written, presented with striking printed edges. The Classic Crime Collection is a brilliant compendium of crime short stories that will satisfy any crime fiction fan. Perfect for dipping into or devouring in one go, there are mystifying stories from such well-known crime writers as Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and Edgar Wallace, but also gems that rarely see the light of day, like the stories from Anton Chekhov, Marie Belloc Lowndes and Anna Katharine Green, who was once described as ''the mother of the detective novel''. There are classic whodunits, cases of stolen gems, scary stories and police procedurals, all waiting for you to see if you can solve the puzzle before you get to the end. Includes: • The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe • The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle • Madame Ville D''Aubier by Josephine Tey • The Blue Cross by G. K. Chesterton • The Arrest of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc • The Golden Slipper by Anna Katharine Green Presented with eye-catching cover embossing and printed page edges, this is the perfect collectible edition for any horror connoisseur. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Pulp Classics series brings together classic short story collections from across the crime, fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, strikingly presented in hardback gift editions with silver cover accents and full-colour page edges.

Uilki Kollinz po obrazovaniju byl juristom i ne ponaslyshke znal o khitrospletenijakh brachnogo zakonodatelstva viktorianskoj epokhi, kotorye masterski vplel v sjuzhet romana "Muzh i zhena". Anna Silvestr, Blansh Landi, Dzheffri Delamejn i Arnold Brinkuort popali v lovushku juridicheskogo paradoksa, tak nazyvaemogo "shotlandskogo braka", kogda muzhem i zhenoj mozhno stat v ljuboj moment, dostatochno prosto objavit pri svideteljakh o svoem namerenii vstupit v brak. Kto-to iz nikh presledoval podlye tseli, a kto-to sluchajno okazalsja v etom pereplete. "Muzh i zhena" - eto istorija o ljubvi, vybore i borbe za spravedlivost v mire, gde pravo i moral ne vsegda sovpadajut.