Wilkie Collins: Inventor of the Crime Novel?

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Collins, William
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Born on 8th January 1824 in London, Wilkie Collins was the oldest son of William Collins, a landscape artist and member of the Royal Academy whose clients included King George IV, high society and leading members of the clergy - see picture on right.

For the first twelve years of his life, Wilkie Collins was taught at home. His parents were strict evangelical Christians and perhaps his later life was a rebellion against the values and philosophy they instilled in him during childhood.

He went with his father on his painting trips to the country and one to Boulogne. Then in 1836, the family went to live in Italy. While he was there, Wilkie learned Italian and to appreciate Italian art. Two years later, the family returned to England and Wilkie was sent to boarding school, a normal practice for the sons of upper and middle class families. It was here that he developed into a storyteller, probably to avoid being bullied by other boys.

He left school at the age of 17 and worked as a clerk in a tea importer's office from 1841 to 1846 then studied for the Bar (lawyer). He was admitted to the Bar but never took up a legal career.

Painting of English Writer Wilkie Collins Photographic Print
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Even while Wilkie Collins was in the tea importers office, he was writing and had completed his first novel, Iolani, which had to wait till 1999 to be published.

He had one story, The Last Stagecoachman, published in 1843 and then his father died in 1847, he wrote a biography of his father which was published and successful.

After that he continued to write and his first novel, Antonina or The Fall of Rome, was published in 1850. This historical work hasn't stood the test of time in the way his later novels have done.

In 1851, Collins met Charles Dickens when he joined the cast of one of Dickens' amateur theatre productions. The two novelists became close friends, a friendship that lasted until Dickens' death in 1870. Collins worked on Dickens' magazine, Household Words, where some of his stories were printed. Some of Collins' novels were serialised in Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. Charles Collins, Wilkie's brother, married Dickens' daughter, Kate, in 1860 so there was also a family connection between the two writers.

Charles Dickens wasn't Collins' only famous friend. Others included Anthony Trollope, George Elliot and artist William Holman Hunt.

Wilkie Collins English Novelist:
a Satire on His Popular Novel the Woman in White
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Wilkie Collins two best known novels are The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The first was published as a book in 1860 although it was serialised in Dickens' All the Year Round the previous year.

In 1868 The Moonstone was published and had also been serialised in All the Year Round.

Wilkie Collins suffered from the extremely painful condition, rheumatic gout, He used laudanum (a form of opium in common use in the 19th century) to alleviate the pain. At times he was taking such large quantities of the drug that he suffered from paranoid delusions and also memory loss.

When he writes of laudanum addiction in The Moonstone, he was writing from his own experience. In fact, Collins was taking so much laudanum while writing this novel, he later said he couldn't remember much of the novel.

The Moonstone was the last of Collins' very successful novels. After this, his sales declined. Many reasons ar given for this decline. One, of course, is his addiction to laudanum. Another is that his novels became less sensational and more concerned with social injustice.

So, even though Wilkie Collins didn't invent the crime novel, it does seem he invented the first female detective in his novel The Law and the Lady published in 1875. It is almost unknown now but it stands up well against Wilkie Collins' more famous books.

The plot centres around the marriage of Valeria Brinton and Eustace Woodville. They marry despite objections from Woodville's family leading to disquiet for Valeria's family and friends.

A few days after the wedding, Valeria suspects her husband is hiding a dark secret in his past and she very quickly discovers that he has been using a false name. When she challenges him, he refuses to confide in her and so they return to London instead of proceeding to Europe to continue their honeymoon.

In London she finds out that his dark secret is that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by poison. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'not proven' rather than 'not guilty' meaning that the jury thought he might have committed the crime but the evidence was not strong enough to convict him so now Eustace Woodville must live under the suspicion that he is a wife murderer.

Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime.

Could any of the other Victorian novelists, like Charles Dickens, have written about a woman investigating a crime? Probably not. The culture of the times saw women as weak, fragile creatures in need of protection. Perhaps it was Collins' unconventional relationships that allowed him to see women's strength and determination.

Collins had the gift of story telling: this book is as gripping as any modern detective story. The novel is a protest against the iniquity of the Scottish 'not proven' verdict (still in use today) because it blights the lives of those who live with suspicion hanging over them for the rest of their lives.

Even though this story is used to illustrate a social injustice, Collins' style shows later authors how to build suspense and to make the reader read just one more page, and another and then a whole chapter. Although the language and idiom is Victorian, the reader quickly becomes accustomed to that because the story is so fascinating.

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Wilkie Collins had an unconventional personal life, especially by Victorian standards. In 1858 he met Caroline Graves, and her daughter and he lived with Caroline for most of his life.

While he continued his relationship with Caroline, Collins also had three children by Martha Judd. From 1868, Martha, whose children Collins recognised as his own, lived with him, although they never married. This must have had a bad effect on Caroline as it was in 1868 she married Joseph Clows but she soon returned to Collins and lived with him as his housekeeper.

As he grew older, Collins increasingly suffered pain from his gout for which he took even more laudanum. His relationship with Dickens had cooled, possibly because of his unconventional private life although Dickens was no stranger to extra-marital affairs.

Wilkie Collins died in 1889 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetary in North London, the final resting place for many other famous people including his old friend Anthony Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray.

• Iolani, or Tahiti as it was. A Romance (written 1844; published 1999)
  
• Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A. (1848)
  
• Antonina (1850)
  
• Rambles Beyond Railways (1851)
  
• Basil (1852)
  
• Mr Wray's Cash Box (1852)
  
• Hide and Seek (1854)
  
• The Ostler (1855)
  
• After the Dark (1856)
  
• The Dead Secret (1857)
  
• A Rogue's Life (1857/1879)
  
• The Frozen Deep (1857), a play co-written with Charles Dickens
  
• A Terribly Strange Bed (1858)
  
• A House to Let (1858), a short story co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth
  Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter
  
• The Queen of Hearts (1859)
  
• The Woman in White (1860)
  
• No Name (1862)
  
• My Miscellanies (1863)
  
• Armadale (1866)
  
• No Thoroughfare (1867), a story and play co-written with Charles Dickens
  
• The Moonstone (1868)
  
• Man and Wife (1870)
  
• Poor Miss Finch (1872)
  
• Miss or Mrs? (1873)
  
• The New Magdalen (1873)
  
• The Frozen Deep and Other Stories (1874)
  
• The Law and the Lady (1875)
  
• The Two Destinies (1876)
  
• The Haunted Hotel (1878)
  
• The Fallen Leaves (1879)
  
• My Lady's Money (1879)
  
• Jezebel's Daughter (1880)
  
• The Black Robe (1881)
  
• Heart and Science (1883)
  
• I Say No (1884)
  
• The Ghost's Touch and Other Stories (1885)
  
• The Evil Genius (1886)
  
• The Guilty River (1886)
  
• Little Novels (1887)
  
• The Legacy of Cain (1889)
  
• Blind Love (1889 - unfinished. Completed by Walter Besant)