Wilkie Collins

I’m reading a biography of Willkie Collins at present.  He was a friend of Dickens, and is famous for writing the first real detective story in English... the Moonstone.

The Moonstone is held to be a classic; it is about the disappearance of a famous Indian diamond and how its theft was solved.  Collins also wrote sensation novels, with several differet narrators, and with highly coloured characters and complicated and exciting plots, often featuring disputed or secret marriages.   Other works of his include “No Name” which criticises British inheritance and marriage laws especially insofar as they affected women, who were usually considered of less importance in terms of inheriting property, than their brothers.

Collins however in spite of his radical political views and his sympathy with women, had 2 mistresses, and had children by both of them but seemed reluctant to give either woman the status and security of marriage.  His own behaviour towards the women in his life was almost as unsympathetic as Dickens’ towards his wife, Catherine.  One of his families was left in poverty within years of his death, and the women were not really part of his social life as they weren’t his legal wives.

His other very famous novel was the thrilling “Woman in White” which has often been adapted for stage and TV and is very popular.   however the heroine Marian Halcombe, is “ugly”. As such, although she’s ten times more interesting and intelligent than Laura, her half-sister who marries the hero, Walter Hartwright, she doesn’t get a marriage or any happy ending other than being her sisters’ companion and the spinster aunt!