Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. The Moonstone, generally recognized as the first detective novel, is not only a work of historical importance but also a work that transcends the genre it created, in the artfulness of its plotting, in its compassionate depiction of servants, and in its enlightened resolution of the theme of the British Empire, its crimes and their consequences. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.

Zhizn nachinajuschego khudozhnika Uoltera Khartrajta, poluchivshego v uedinennom imenii neobremenitelnuju dolzhnost uchitelja risovanija, naveki izmenilas posle vstrechi s tainstvennoj molodoj neznakomkoj, odetoj v beloe... Kto ona? Pochemu tak otchajanno proklinaet kakogo-to baroneta? Chto za vsadniki skachut po ee sledu? I nakonets, pochemu ona pokhozha na odnu iz uchenits Uoltera, slovno sestra-bliznets? Reshiv vyjasnit eto, khudozhnik, sam togo ne podozrevaja, okazyvaetsja vputan v zagadochnuju istoriju, polnuju tschatelno khranimykh godami familnykh sekretov. Sekretov, opasnykh dlja vsekh - i prezhde vsego dlja togo, kto popytaetsja ikh raskryt...

“In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven… two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their employer.” Under the pseudonyms of Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins set off on a walking tour of the north-west of England, reporting back on their adventures for Dickens’s magazine Household Words. A unique insight into the friendship of two of the towering figures of Victorian literature, and featuring a pair of chilling ghost stories from the leading exponents of the genre, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices is a charming evocation of the adventures they experienced on their trip and the gently mocking nature of their relationship.

The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859-1860, and first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the first mystery novels. The various strands of the plot combine to produce a thrilling story, leading this particular type of fiction to be described as 'sensation'. A strong theme in the novel is that of marriage and its impact on women (in particular on Laura Fairlie). The plot revolves around men stealing women's identities. The Woman in White was the key book in establishing what became known as 'sensation fiction': breathless and deviously plotted novels that combined domestic Realism, the simple moral universe of theatre melodrama (virtuous women menaced by dastardly cads), and the thirst for gruesome and spectacular crimes that an ever-increasing newspaper readership lapped up with a mix of moral outrage and prurience. Sensation fiction thus fused the Gothic romance with the Realist novel, finding horrors not in some fantastical Medieval castle, but behind the doors of apparently normal suburban semi-detached houses, where secrets festered and multiplied. The story is sometimes considered an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) 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.