Wilkie Collins

Un manoir sur la c te d chiquet e de Cornouailles.... Une Myst rieuse lettre.... Un terrible secret.... Wilkie Collins, le p re du roman policier anglais, nous livre ici une intrigue remplie de rebondissements, de Suspense et d' motions. C'est aussi une critique de la condition f minine dans la soci t victorienne ainsi qu'une histoire remplie d'Humour et d'Amour.

A doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane? When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered. In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies. How are these little mysteries connected?

En esta inolvidable historia, un sue o premonitorio le salva la vida al protagonista, aunque le condena a vivir en el infernal mundo de las pesadillas, y al terror de la espera, de La dama del sue o.

Walter Hartright, un jeune professeur en art, vient en aide une belle et myst rieuse femme toute de blanc v tue. Il apprend peu apr s qu'il s'agit d'une folle chapp e d'un asile. Le jour suivant, il se rend Limmeridge House dans le Cumberland o il s'est vu offrir un emploi. Or, parmi ses nouveaux l ves, la jeune Laura Fairlie ressemble fort la femme en blanc qu'il a d j secourue...

Lo que empieza como una c ustica, y a menudo hilarante comedia de equ vocos, se transforma paulatinamente en un horrible cuadro conyugal de traici n, venganza, malos tratos, locura y asesinato. Marido y mujer, inmediatamente posterior a La piedra lunar, pertenece al per odo de mayor creatividad de Wilkie Collins.

Lo que empieza como una c ustica, y a menudo hilarante comedia de equ vocos, se transforma paulatinamente en un horrible cuadro conyugal de traici n, venganza, malos tratos, locura y asesinato. Marido y mujer, inmediatamente posterior a La piedra lunar, pertenece al per odo de mayor creatividad de Wilkie Collins.

L'abime est une lecture de hasard, deux crivains tr s connus, une criture quatre mains. Pourtant cette histoire tr s l g re n'est pas marquante, certes elle est aussi tr s courte. Elle se d roule entre l'Angleterre et la Suisse. Monsieur Walter Wilding voit son affaire de n goce prosp rer au fil des ans, aussi d cide-t-il de s'associer avec Mr Vendale. Voila, Monsieur Wilding doit aussi sa bonne fortune de sa m re, qui vient de d c der et dont il vient d'h riter. Or par inadvertance, il apprend qu'en r alit il n'est pas le fils l gitime de cette dame, qu'une erreur d'identit a t commise suite une erreur administrative...

William Wilkie Collins (8 janvier 1824 - 23 septembre 1889) est un crivain britannique de l' poque victorienne, contemporain et ami de Charles Dickens. Tr s populaire de son vivant, il est l'auteur de 27 romans, plus de 50 nouvelles, au moins 15 pi ces de th tre et plus de 100 essais. Biographie William Wilkie Collins est n Marylebone en Londres le 8 janvier 1824. Il est le fils d'un peintre paysagiste renomm , William Collins. 17 ans, il abandonne l' cole pour devenir apprenti dans une entreprise de n goce de th . Il crit alors son premier roman Iolani (publi seulement en 1999). Cinq ans plus tard, il entre la Lincoln's Inn afin d' tudier le droit; il obtient un titre d'avocat en 1851. Apr s la mort de son p re en 1847, Collins publie son livre, M moires et Vie de William Collins, Esquire (1848), en ex cution du testament paternel, et commence une carri re de peintre, exposant la Royal Academy Summer exhibition de 1849. Mais c'est avec la publication de son roman Antonina, en 1850, que sa carri re d' crivain commence v ritablement. En 1851, Collins est pr sent Charles Dickens par un ami commun, Augustus Egg. Une longue amiti et une collaboration vont na tre; plusieurs des romans de Collins seront publi s dans l'hebdomadaire de Charles Dickens: All the Year Round, sous forme de feuilletons. Charles Dickens publie et dite ensuite lui-m me les romans de Collins. Collins souffrait de la goutte, et devint d pendant de l'opium (sous forme de laudanum) qu'il prenait afin de soulager sa douleur. Il en r sultait des crises de parano a o il tait convaincu d' tre poursuivi par un Doppelg nger (son double fantomatique)... Son roman La Pierre de lune (The Moonstone) d crit les effets de la d pendance l'opium. Collins admit plus tard que sa consommation de laudanum tait telle l' poque, qu'il ne se souvenait plus d'avoir crit la majeure partie du roman. Traducteur: Hephell, pseudonyme de Fanny le Breton en 1892 R sum Le p re d'Iris veut lui faire pouser Hugues Montjoie qui est tr s amoureux de la jeune femme. Mais la jeune Iris en aime un autre... auquel elle devra renoncer, mais la vie va de nouveau les mettre sur le m me chemin. Pourchass par des Irlandais, il va entrainer Iris dans ses m saventures...

Fans of traditional British Mysteries are in for a treat with three novels from Wilkie Collins, A. A. Milne and Ford Madox Ford Included in Volume 1 of British Mystery Multipacks: THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford paved the way for over a century of thriller writers and film-makers who would go on to use the idea of the unreliable narrator to create mystery and suspense. Events chronicle the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel opens with the famous line, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." The narrator explains that for nine years he, his wife Florence and their friends Ashburnham and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while Edward and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in Nauheim, Germany. As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems. Florence's heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with an American thug named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless, imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and Leonora's attempts to control Edward's affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead. The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of early twentieth-century fiction. ''One of the finest novels of our century.'' --Graham Greene. HAUNTED HOTEL by Wilkie Collins The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice --- or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work? Wilkie Collins's little known horror-ghost story of 1878 recalls his two prior triumphs The Woman in White and The Moonstone with its use of detective procedures and mystery-genre plot twists that made those two earlier novels so popular with Victorian readers. THE RED HOUSE MYSTERY by A. A. Milne The Red House Mystery is a "locked room" whodunnit by A. A. Milne, published in 1922. It was Milne's only mystery novel. Mark Ablett has disappeared, so Tony Gillingham, a stranger who has just arrived to call on his friend Bill, decides to investigate. Gillingham plays Sherlock Holmes to his younger counterpart's Doctor Watson; they progress almost playfully through the novel while the clues mount up and the theories abound. In his introduction to the 1926 UK edition, A. A. Milne said he had "a passion" for detective stories, having "all sorts of curious preferences" about them: though in real life the best detectives and criminals are professionals, Milne demanded that the detective be an unscientific amateur, accompanied by a likeable Watson, rubbing shoulders with an amateur villain against whom dossiers and fingerprints are of no avail. This was Milne's first and final venture into the detective and mystery genre, despite its immediate success and an offer of two thousand pounds for his next mystery novel. Milne lets his readers inside the head of his amateur detective, disregarding the clich d romance or violence of other detective novels, as the mystery becomes a puzzling sort of parlor game for the novel's characters and readers alike. Alexander Woollcott called The Red House Mystery "one of the three best mystery stories of all time."