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Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1860), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
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culture · English novelist and playwright (1824–1889) · writer · journalist · novelist · playwright · poet lawyer · barrister · also Wilkie Collins, William Wilkie Collins, William Collins, Collins
Born 8 January 1824 · Died 23 September 1889 · Q210740
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2026· 1 entry
2024· 1 entry
The Guardian: Where to start with: Wilkie Collins
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2018· 3 entries
The Guardian: How Wilkie Collins found sensation in ordinary life
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The Guardian: Serial chiller: Wilkie Collins, master of the cliffhanger
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The Guardian: Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is our reading group choice for August
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2014· 1 entry
The New Criterion: Wilkie Collins’s page-turners
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2008· 1 entry
“Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death.”
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2003· 1 entry
“A very remarkable work... in the present state of light literature in England, a novel that actually tells a story. It 's quite incredible, I know. Try the book. It has another extraordinary merit, it isn't written by a woman.”
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1895· 1 entry
And was buried with Collins
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1889· 1 entry
Died 1889-09-23.
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1884· 1 entry
Collins was elected vice-president of the Society of Authors, which had been founded by his friend and fellow novelist Walter Besant
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1870· 2 entries
Collins' novel Man and Wife was published
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And with it the loss of his literary mentoring, Collins's increased dependence upon laudanum, and his penchant for using his fiction to rail against social injustices
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1868· 2 entries
And the last novel of what is generally regarded as the most successful decade of Collins' author's career, was, despite a somewhat cool reception from both Dickens and the critics, a significant return to form
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Collins met Martha Rudd in Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, and the two began a liaison
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1864· 1 entry
Began work on his novel Armadale, travelling in August to the Norfolk Broads and the village of Winterton-on-Sea to do research for it
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1858· 2 entries
Collins began living with Caroline Graves and her daughter Harriet
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Collins collaborated with Dickens and other writers on the story "A House to Let"
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1850· 1 entry
Collins met Charles Dickens, who became his friend and mentor
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1849· 1 entry
Collins exhibited a painting, The Smugglers' Retreat, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition
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1847· 1 entry
Collins produced his first published book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, published in 1848
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1846· 1 entry
To study law; his father wanted him to have a steady income
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1845· 1 entry
“My youthful imagination ran riot among the noble savages, in scenes which caused the respectable British publisher to declare that it was impossible to put his name on the title page of such a novel.”
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1840· 1 entry
The family moved to 85 Oxford Terrace, Bayswater
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1835· 1 entry
Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy
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1828· 1 entry
Collins's brother Charles Allston Collins was born
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1824· 1 entry
Born 1824-01-08.
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