Wilkie Collins

Product Description

Short & oddly built with a head too big for his body extremely short-sighted unable to stay still dressed in colourful clothes as if playing a certain part in the great general drama of life Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer befriended by the great loved by children irresistibly attractive to women -- & avidly read by generations of readers. Ackroyd follows his hero the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer his years of fame & his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler Charles Dickens. A true Londoner Collins like Dickens was fascinated by the secrets & crimes -- the fraud blackmail & poisonings -- that lay hidden behind the citys respectable facade. He was a fighter never afraid to point out injustices & shams or to tackle the establishment head on. As well as his enduring masterpieces The Moonstone -- often called the first true detective novel -- & the sensational The Woman in White he produced an intriguing array of lesser known works. Collins had his own secrets: he never married but lived for thirty years with the widowed Caroline Graves & also had a second liaison as Mr & Mrs Dawson with a younger mistress Martha Rudd with whom he had three children. Both women remained devoted as illness & opium-taking took their toll: he died in 1889 in the middle of writing his last novel Blind Love. Told with Peter Ackroyds inimitable verve this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great story-teller full of surprises rich in humour & sympathetic understanding.