The Woman in White (1859-60) is the first and greatest `Sensation Novel'. Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue.
The novel is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction - Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant `Napoleon of Crime'. A masterwork of intricate construction, The Woman in White sets new standards of suspense and excitement, and achieved sales which topped even those of Dickens, Collins's friend and mentor.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
The Moonstone is a page-turner, writes Carolyn Heilbrun. It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story through the recountings of its several narrators, all of them enticing and singular. Wilkie Collinss spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and murder inspired a hugely popular genrethe detective mystery. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition.
The Woman in White (1859-60) is the first and greatest `Sensation Novel'. Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue.
The novel is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction - Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant `Napoleon of Crime'. A masterwork of intricate construction, The Woman in White sets new standards of suspense and excitement, and achieved sales which topped even those of Dickens, Collins's friend and mentor.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Une nuit, Walter Hartright, jeune professeur de dessin, porte secours à une mystérieuse " dame en blanc " que semble poursuivre une obscure menace. La jeune femme, parmi des propos incohérents, laisse entendre qu'elle est familière d'un lieu où il doit prochainement se rendre - le manoir de Limmeridge, perdu dans les brumes du Nord - pour enseigner la peinture aux deux pupilles de Mr Fairlie, Marian Halcombe et Laura Fairlie.Une fois sur place, à sa grande stupeur, Walter se rend compte que Laura ressemble étrangement à cette mystérieuse créature fantomatique, tout droit échappée d'un asile... Fervent défenseur de la cause féminine, il sent alors se nouer autour de lui un implacable complot : des mariages arrangés, voire meurtriers ; des hospitalisations de force par d'honorables familles soucieuses d'écarter des témoins gênants ; une société secrète qui fait poignarder les traîtres à sa cause...Tiré de l'histoire vraie de sa rencontre avec la femme qu'il aima jusqu'à la fin de ses jours - Caroline Graves, séquestrée avec son enfant par un mari à moitié fou -, Collins fait de la " dame en blanc " l'héroïne de ce roman angoissant plein de pièges et de terreurs intimes...
Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for playing the Joker, capturing the psychologically dark personality of a villain. Critics were stunned - just as how the villainous character of Lydia Gwilt in "Armadale" stunned critics of the time. "Armadale" might give us the Victorian answer to the Joker, but it's not only a psychological thriller. This novel is also a feat of classic Victorian themes of the supernatural, detectives, and romance.
Inheriting his mother's family estate in Norfolk, Allan Armadale is brought into contact with the spine-chilling Lydia who is jealous of his love interest. Meanwhile, Allan's friend, Ozias Midwinter, receives a letter written years before by a man on his deathbed - also named Allan Armadale. The letter reveals a shocking secret that connects the past of Allan and Ozias.
Discovering this secret, Lydia "the Joker" Gwilt uses it to plot against Allan in a dramatic tale of stolen identity and family inheritance.
London-born Wilke Collins (1824-1889) became known in Victorian England for his novels and plays, sometimes writing together with Charles Dickens. His most famous works, "The Woman in White" (1859) and "The Moonstone" (1868), are examples of the first modern detective novels.
It usually takes somebody already familiar with the piece or its author, or perhaps a bride-to-be who went a little too deep down the Google rabbit hole, to whip up much attention for a title like "The Woman in White". Yet that's not to say that those that let themselves be spirited away to the hot summer nights of 1850s Cumberland, North West England, aren't in for a treat.
A young artist has secured a position as a private teacher for a pair of fair ladies in the countryside, but on the night of his departure from London, a secretive and distressed woman clad all in white(!) crosses his path. He later discovers that she's an escaped mental patient and thus a gothic mystery of love, marriage, murder and greed unfolds.
But don't just take our word for it - a lot of people thought this book was the proverbial bomb, including the author himself, who figured he'd never write anything better. Hence "The Woman in White" has been adapted for radio twice, for theatre a total of 5 times, for film and television 13 times and even became a computer game in 2010.
Novelist, playwright, genre pioneer, opium addict, magnificently bearded individual - dead Englishman Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) has many titles to his name. Having a knack for mystery and unconventional characters, Collins' biggest contribution to world literature comes in the forms of "A Women in White" (1859) and "The Moonstone" (1868), with the former being mentioned on his headstone while the latter is widely considered the first modern detective novel.
A giant diamond stolen from India; a rakish rogue; a naive teenager and a drug-fueled scandal.
These are the leading parts that combine to make one of the greatest detective novels of all time.
'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins laid many of the foundations for the detective genre.
At heart, though, it is a great story.
Rachel Verinder inherits a large Indian diamond on her 18th birthday. It turns out to have been stolen from India by her corrupt uncle and is of immense religious significance.
When the diamond goes missing at Rachel's birthday party, it sparks a mystery that involves Indian jugglers, Hindu priests, an unlikely love story, betrayal, intrigue - and twists and turns to the final page.
Collins was a close friend of Charles Dickens, who serialised 'The Moonstone' in his magazine 'All the Year Round'.
In 2016 it was made into a five-part BBC TV series, starring John Thomson.
It is an example of an epistolary novel: one written as a series of documents, including letters and diary entries. Other famous examples include Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'.
William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist and playwright. His most popular novels are 'The Woman in White' - adapted for stage in 2004 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and for BBC TV in 2018, starring Ben Hardy and Jessie Buckley - and 'The Moonstone'.
Collins was initially a tea merchant before his first novel 'Antonina' was published. Soon afterwards, his life was transformed by meeting and becoming friends with Charles Dickens. The great novelist became a mentor and helped him with his two classic novels.
Pour les médecins accourus à son chevet, pour les experts des assurances-vie venus enquêter sur place, la mort soudaine de lord Montbarry dans un palais vénitien, peu de temps après son mariage, n'a rien de suspect. " Sa Seigneurie " a succombé à une pneumonie aiguë. Sa femme et son beau-frère n'ont rien pu faire.Les circonstances de cette mort, pourtant, soulèvent bien des questions. Pourquoi lord Montbarry avait-il délaissé la jeune Agnès et épousé l'intrigante comtesse Narona, malgré sa réputation d'aventurière ? À quoi joue exactement le baron Rivar, frère présumé de cette dernière, qui engloutit des sommes énormes dans ses expériences de chimie ? Ne serait-il pas plutôt... l'amant de la comtesse ? Enfin et surtout, qu'est devenu Ferrari, l'homme à tout faire du lord, dont on est sans nouvelle depuis le drame ?Transformé en hôtel, le palais livrera-t-il un jour ses secrets ? Wilkie Collins met à l'épreuve les nerfs du lecteur, dont il anéantit sans cesse les déductions. Quitte à semer, au fil de l'intrigue, quelques indices surprenants...
1845 : On donne un bal à la mairie de Londres pour célébrer le départ de deux navires vers le pôle Arctique, lancés à la recherche du mythique passage du Nord-Ouest et menés par sir John Franklin. 1854 : L'Angleterre est sous le choc. Une enquête vient de révéler le sort de l'équipage dépêché neuf ans plus tôt par-delà le Groenland. Que s'est-il passé ? Est-il possible que des gentlemen anglais, grands civilisateurs du genre humain. Se soit abaissés au cannibalisme ?
Alors que Walter Wilding se croit condamné à une existence misérable, il hérite une somme d'argent considérable d'une mère qu'il n'a jamais connue. Se croyant sauvé, il apprend que cette mystérieuse bienfaitrice s'est trompée d'enfant. Son seul but : retrouver le vrai Walter Wilding. Des beaux quartiers de Londres aux montagnes suisses, où le héros risque sa vie à chaque instant, cette trépidante enquête policière combine la virtuosité de raconteur d'histoire de Collins au génie créateur de personnages de Dickens.Préface de Charles Dantzig
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What is this Dead Secret?
Mrs. Treverton is dying. She gives to her servant Sarah a letter for her husband. Exhausted, she doesn't want to bring this Secret in the grave. Sarah can not deliver this missive to her grieving master and her only five-year-old daughter Rosamond. She hides it in one of the rooms of the house and she disappears ...
Fifteen years later, Rosamond understands that the house of her childhood hides a secret and she will do anything to find out ...
Wilkie Collins, a remarkable observer of his time, knows how to portray these tortured souls. This novel is a classic that has kept all its charm and definitely, is a brilliantly written Masterpiece. The process of unveiling this secret is strewn with pitfalls, detours and false tracks that will keep the re
Le colonel Herncastle, officier de l'armée des Indes, connaissait la malédiction de la pierre de lune, lorsqu'il déroba ce diamant au front d'un dieu hindou. C'est pourtant ce mystérieux bijou, ayant traversé les siècles sous la protection de trois brahmanes, qu'il va offrir à sa nièce, l'impétueuse Rachel Verinder, pour ses dix-huit ans...
Lors de la soirée d'anniversaire, trois jongleurs indiens s'introduisent dans le parc. Dès le lendemain matin, on découvre que le joyau, enfermé dans un tiroir de la chambre de Rachel, a disparu. Un majordome insoupconnable, une vieille fille, un usurier, des avoués, une voleuse repentie et des médecins trop bavards... Tous donnent le change au redoutable sergent Cuff, meilleur limier de la Met, tandis que les deux cousins de Rachel s'affrontent pour obtenir sa main...
On a souvent comparé l'art du suspense de Wilkie Collins, l'un des précurseurs du roman policier, à celui d'Alfred Hitchcock. La Pierre de lune, plébiscité dès sa parution en 1868, piège le lecteur au coeur d'une toile d'hypothèses dont il ne le délivre qu'à la dernière page, une fois tous les masques arrachés.
Imagine as a woman losing all your property to your husband. Sadly, such was the law for much of the Victorian times. Wilkie Collins's novel "The Woman in White" (starring Charles Dance in a recent BBC adaptation) first explored this absurdity. Now expanding on marriage law, Collins writes a protest for women's rights in "Man and Wife".
Two young women, Anne and Blanche, live together in Scotland after Anne's father abandoned her due to a legal loophole. Both women are engaged but Anne's fiancé, Geoffrey, is getting cold feet. Yet Anne knows a trick from the Scottish law books: if a man is witnessed to verbally declare a woman his wife, they are legally married.
Meanwhile, Blanche's fiancé, Arnold, is sent on Geoffrey's behalf to meet Anne. Under guise, Arnold publicly asks for his "wife", and accidentally potentially marries Anne. A fascinating tale of a wife's rights, this thriller will make you question the true impact of a marriage proposal.
London-born Wilke Collins (1824-1889) became known in Victorian England for his novels and plays, sometimes writing together with Charles Dickens. His most famous works, "The Woman in White" (1859) and "The Moonstone" (1868), are examples of the first modern detective novels.
Cette nuit d'aout 1829, le temps semble arrêté au domaine de Porthgenna Tower, un manoir isolé sur la côte sauvage des Cornouailles. La châtelaine, l'ancienne actrice Rosamond Treverton, est sur le point de passer de vie à trépas. Mais avant de mourir, cette femme de tempérament veut remplir un ultime devoir : confesser à son mari, par écrit, le crime dont elle s'accuse.
Or c'est à Sarah Leeson, sa femme de chambre, qu'elle confie le soin de rédiger l'aveu. Quel effroyable secret contient cette lettre scellée ? Et pourquoi Sarah préfère-telle la cacher et s'enfuir, au lieu d'accomplir les dernières exigences de sa maîtresse ? Aurait-elle, elle aussi, quelque chose à se reprocher ?
On a souvent comparé à celui d'Alfred Hitchcock l'art du suspense de Wilkie Collins, dont Le Secret (1857) offre une spectaculaire illustration. Armé d'un humour incisif, cet ami et rival de Dickens y joue avec les nerfs du lecteur et jette un regard décapant sur les moeurs de son temps.
Dr Phil didn't invent family drama. This Victorian novel might as well be given the Dr Phil caption of "I found out my parents weren't married, and my cousin won't give me my inheritance". A suspenseful yet poignant tale of the prejudices against illegitimacy, "No Name" captures the anxieties at the time - but also love stories - surrounding marriage.
Two sisters, Magdalen and Norah Vanstone live an idyllic life in the English countryside with their wealthy parents. A tragedy upends their lives, suddenly losing their status in society. This new life brings Magdalen to York, then London, beginning her riveting tale of acting, marriage proposals, revenge, and even poison.
A thriller that would put Dr Phil out of business, "No Name" emphasises romance in the face of rigid Victorian society.
London-born Wilke Collins (1824-1889) became known in Victorian England for his novels and plays, sometimes writing together with Charles Dickens. His most famous works, "The Woman in White" (1859) and "The Moonstone" (1868), are examples of the first modern detective novels.
Madonna, the Queen of Pop, was not the first to be named in honour of the graceful Madonna in art. The focal point of this novel, Mary, is affectionately known as "Madonna" on account of her beauty. Moreover, Mary is both deaf and dumb: "Hide and Seek" is a bold and thrilling Victorian novel that reflects on disability in a positive light.
Mary was adopted from a circus by Lavinia - who also has a disability - and Valentine Blyth. That circus past becomes the central enigma of the novel when friends Zachary and Mat become involved with Mary in London. Mat is solving his own family mystery when he stumbles upon a shocking detail linked to Mary.
A tale of forbidden love, family drama, and mystery, Charles Dickens liked it so much that he declared it the "cleverest novel". (It even has a circus clown - eat your heart out Krusty the Clown.)
London-born Wilke Collins (1824-1889) became known in Victorian England for his novels and plays, sometimes writing together with Charles Dickens. His most famous works, "The Woman in White" (1859) and "The Moonstone" (1868), are examples of the first modern detective novels.
Comment la tranquillité peut finir par rendre fou.
William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) n'est pas seulement l'auteur de somptueux romans victoriens et le père du roman policier britannique. Nouvelliste de talent, il est aussi journaliste à ses heures. Et fin observateur de ses contemporains. En quête du rien est le portrait primesautier, drôle et absurde d'un homme condamné à l'inactivité et au calme dans une société qui en est dépourvue. Ou comment la tranquillité peut finir par rendre fou.
The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. T. S. Eliot famously described THE MOONSTONE as 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels', but, as Sandra Kemp discusses in her introduction, it offers many other facets, which reveal Collins's sensibilities as untypical of his era.
Marian and her sister Laura live a quiet life under their uncle's guardianship until Laura's marriage to Sir Percival Glyde. Sir Percival is a man of many secrets - is one of them connected to the strange appearances of a young woman dressed all in white? And what does his charismatic friend, Count Fosco, with his pet white mice running in and out of his brightly coloured waistcoat, have to do with it all? Marian and the girls' drawing master, Walter, have to turn detective in order to work out what is going on, and to protect Laura from a fatal plot . . .
After the tragic deaths of their parents, Magdalen and Norah discover the devastating news that they are both illegitimate and not entitled to any inheritance. Norah is forced to become a governess to earn her keep but Magdalen has grander plans and embarks on an elaborate scheme of revenge against her cold-hearted relatives.
"The Moonstone is a page-turner," writes Carolyn Heilbrun. "It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story through the recountings of its several narrators, all of them enticing and singular." Wilkie Collins's spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and murder inspired a hugely popular genre-the detective mystery. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition.
When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money - and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction'. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian 'sensation novels'.
The only edition in print, Man and Wife combines the fast pace and sensational plot of Collins's most famous novels with a biting attack on the inequitable marriage laws in Victorian Britain. - ;`This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questions the deeply inequitable marriage laws of his day.
Man and Wife examines the plight of a woman who, promised marriage by one man, comes to believe that she may inadvertently have gone through a form of marriage with his friend, as recognized by the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. From this starting-point Collins develops a radical critique of the values and conventions of Victorian society.
Collins had already developed a reputation as the master of the `sensation novel', and Man and Wife is as fast moving and unpredictable as The Moonstone and The Woman in White. During the novel the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister as the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder. -
