Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was born on 8 January 1824 in London, a city that would also mark the end of his life. A British citizen, he spent portions of his childhood in Italy and France, where he learned French and Italian alongside whatever English schooling he received. That early exposure to life on the continent gave his upbringing a range that was uncommon among his contemporaries.
Collins worked across several fields — as a barrister, a journalist, a playwright, and a novelist — writing throughout in the English language. His career took a notable turn when he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's work appeared first in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round, placing his writing before the readership those publications reached.
Two novels stand as his most noted works. The Woman in White drew wide attention and remains one of the titles most associated with his name. The Moonstone followed and has been called the first modern English detective novel, a description that points to something distinctive in how it handled its subject matter. Both works were written in English and reflect the novelist and playwright Collins had become by that stage of his career.
Collins died on 23 September 1889 in London, the same city where he had been born sixty-five years earlier. His occupations across his working life — barrister, journalist, playwright, novelist — point to a writer who moved between forms and disciplines, leaving behind, among other things, a novel that critics have identified as a landmark in detective fiction.
Quotes by Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins's insights on:
IT wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the weather showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally associated with the coming season. The atmosphere was unnaturally warm, and the old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and enervating mist.
How much happier we should be,′ she thought to herself sadly, ’if we never grew up!
Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else!
In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of three men at least. In my present dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces more easily than I.
I constantly see old people flushed and excited by the prospect of some anticipated pleasure which altogether fails to ruffle the tranquillity of their serene grandchildren. Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and girls now as our seniors were in their time? Has the great advance in education taken rather too long a stride;.
He was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which is peculiar to English servants.
Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known.
The most easily deteriorated of all the moral qualities is the quality called ‘conscience.’ In one state of a man’s mind, his conscience is the severest judge that can pass sentence on him. In another state, he and his conscience are on the best possible terms with each other in the comfortable capacity of accomplices.
How it was I don’t understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another’s way. When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.