Wilkie Collins

Magdalen Vanstone and her sister Norah learn the true meaning of social stigma in Victorian England only after the traumatic discovery that their dearly loved parents, whose sudden deaths have left them orphans, were not married at the time of their birth. Disinherited by law and brutally ousted from Combe-Raven, the idyllic country estate which has been their peaceful home since childhood, the two young women are left to fend for themselves. While...

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) is best known as the innovator of the English detective novel, whose sensational novels, plays, and short stories were hugely popular in the Victorian Era. Today, readers enjoy Collins' intricate and suspenseful plots, and his penetrating social commentary on the plight of women and domestic issues of the time. Unfortunately Collins suffered from rheumatic gout, for which he took the opiate laudanum, and which eventually...

Lord Montbarry breaks off his engagement to Agnes Lockwood to marry the Countess Narona. The couple end a continental tour in Venice where they live reclusively in a large, decaying palace. They are accompanied by Baron Rivar, brother of the Countess, and by Ferrari, their courier. Agnes learns from Montbarry's brother, Henry Westwick, that Montbarry, whose life was insured for £10,000 in favour of his wife, has died of bronchitis. The courier has...

This early work by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1852. Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins' family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole's boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand. In 1846, Collins became a law...

The main story begins in 1875. Helena and Eunice are sisters brought up by their father, the Reverend Abel Gracedieu. He has deliberately kept them in ignorance of their true ages because the elder daughter was adopted in 1858, after her natural mother was executed for the brutal murder of her husband. The story's main narrator is the prison governor who always feared the adoption would end badly because of the taint of inherited evil. The household...

Old-timey horror is often a hard sell to a modern, visually-oriented audience whose palettes have long been cleansed, and numbed, by jumpscares, the gorefests of SAW-movies and the now common trope of evil children. Thus pampered by excess, it can be hard to ignore the old works' ghost strings, cheap rubber masks and the fact that the world and its horrors back then was simply... simpler. And when Wilkie Collins, on top of all that, graces this story...

I Say No starts off slow as a novel somewhat characteristic to Wilkie Collins' style, but also extremely unique in its entertaining, attention-grabbing presentation and style. Even the name “I Say No” itself is based on intricate, fascinating developments that only fully unfold before the reader at the end of the novel.

"You don't have to put on the red light", as Sting sings – except this female main character, Mercy Merrick, comes to that conclusion herself. Originally written as a play, "The New Magdalen" is a classic Victorian sensation novel, highlighting the prejudices against a woman of the streets in English society. Mercy is at the frontline of the war in France when she meets Grace Roseberry, a traveller who is returning to England to connect with her...

"Remember to the last, that while there is life there is hope." Onboard the ship The Golden Mary we meet a dignified woman in black, a man who wants to try his luck in the gold rush in California, a mother and her daughter heading to meet the father, and of course Captain Ravender, a great believer in duty before self. When the ship is struck by an iceberg and sinks, the crew and passengers are moved to lifeboats. But they are still far from safety. Like...

The ghost story has long been a staple of world literature, but many of the greatest tales have been forgotten, overshadowed in many cases by their authors' bestselling work in other genres. In this anthology, little known stories from literary titans like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are collected alongside overlooked works from masters of horror fiction like Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James. Acclaimed anthologists Leslie S. Klinger and Lisa...