Wilkie Collins was a Victorian-era British writer and close friend of Charles Dickens. His most famous works, The Moonstone and The Woman in White, pioneered the use of multiple narrators. Collins wrote over 20 novels and 15 plays, often set outside England, and was addicted to opium. His work has been praised by audiences but criticized by some critics. He died in 1889, with The Woman in White being his favorite work. His friendship with Dickens was based on their shared love of mystery and surprise in their writing.
Wilkie Collins was a British writer of the Victorian era, a close friend of Charles Dickens and one of the most innovative novelists of his time. His most famous works, published in serialized format are The Moonstone, the first detective novel ever written, and The Woman in White. Both works use first-person narration, but also include multiple narrators (similar to an epistolary novel) just as is the case with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which may have been inspired by the work of Wilkie Collins, which preceded it.
Wilkie Collins was born in England in 1824. His father was a painter and may have been the inspiration for the character of an artist in the novel Hide and Seek. When Wilkie Collins was a teenager, his father William decided to take his wife and two children to Italy to study painting for a year. Wilkie Collins made a lot of money from his travels in Europe, which would later figure largely in his novels. Unlike Dickens, Wilkie Collins often set at least some of his novels and plays outside England to add more splendor and drama to his sensational writing style.
Upon his return to England, Wilkie Collins first decided to study law. While studying, the writer worked on his first novel Iolani, which was not published until the end of the 20th century. Collins’ father died in the 20th of him, prompting the writer to compose his father’s biography of him, which was not published until 1847. His first work of fiction, Antonina was published two years later.
In 1851, Wilkie Collins met Dickens, beginning a two-decade-long friendship that would make Collins more successful. He published several of his novels in Dickens’ magazine, All The Year Round, and was a frequent contributor to Dickens’s other successful publication, Household Words.
For most of his adult life, although quite productive and successful, he was unfortunately addicted to laudanum-derived opium. He suffered from what was called “rheumatic gout,” which was probably rheumatoid arthritis. He also lived outside the realm of “traditional” morality. He was romantically involved with two women, Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd. By Martha he had three children but the two never married. With Caroline he had an on and off relationship, sometimes residing with her.
During his lifetime Wilkie Collins wrote over 20 novels and 15 plays. He has also published numerous non-fiction pieces. His work has been almost universally admired by its audiences, but critics have often attacked his work, especially the novel Armadale, for dwelling too much on his villains. This novel, when read today, is considered triumphant for brilliantly exploring the psyche of the anti-hero.
Subsequent works following The Moonstone were less suspenseful and dealt more with social commentary and commentary, much in imitation of Dickens. Some critics believe this change was an attempt to atone for alleged character flaws in him that led to his addiction to opium and his affairs with two women at the same time. Still others believe that Wilkie Collins took over from Dickens in commenting on social injustice. The Moonstone was published in 1868 and Dickens died two years later.
Wilkie Collins is thought to have enjoyed her work The Woman in White the most. When he died in 1889, his gravestone notes him as the author of it and mentions no other novels. When studying Victorian novelists, Collins’ work is an excellent companion to later Dickens novels. Dickens as well as Collins loved the element of mystery and surprise, and this occurs more frequently in Dickens’ later works. Many believe that the friendship between Dickens and Wilkie Collins can be traced directly to the works they published during their long friendship.
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