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The Black Robe
by Wilkie CollinsWilkie Collins’s 1881 The Black Robe tells the story of the misadventures of Lewis Romayne in a novel which deals with depression, madness, a fatal duel, marital breakdown, capture by South American ‘natives’, ill-motivated religious conversion, bigamy and disinheritance. The somewhat mad premise is that scheming Jesuit Father Branwell is out to wi..
Blind Love
by Wilkie CollinsBlind Love is Wilkie Collins’s final novel. Although he did not live to complete the work, he left detailed plans for the last third of this absorbingly plotted novel which were faithfully executed by his colleague, the popular author Walter Besant. The novel is set during the Irish Land War of the early 1880s and tells the story of Iris Henley, an..
The Dead Alive
by Wilkie CollinsThe Dead Alive, also called John Jago’s Ghost, is a novella written in 1874 by Wilkie Collins based on the Boorn Brothers murder case. It was reprinted with a side-by-side examination of the case by Rob Warden in 2005 by Northwestern Press. This novel is based on the true-life Boorn Brothers murder conviction case of 1819. Jesse and Step..
The Dead Secret - A Novel
by Wilkie CollinsThe Dead Secret is Collins' last work before he struck gold with The Woman in White, and it marks a considerable step forward from the novels which preceded it. On her deathbed, Mrs Treverton, the wife of the wealthy Captain Treverton, dictates a confession to her maid, Sarah Leeson, to pass to her husband and makes her swear that she will never de..
The Evil Genius - A Domestic Story
by Wilkie CollinsCollins' most financially successful novel, The Evil Genius, opens with a jury determining the fate of a sea captain whose ship allegedly facilitated a diamond theft. The story develops into a powerful novel of Victorian private life, including deception, adultery and divorce. The story was ahead of its time in presenting both the wife and the..
A Fair Penitent
by Wilkie CollinsAn editor introduces the confession of a former star of the Paris stage who leaves her life of vice and sin to eventually become a Carmelite nun. The fair penitent of the title is a renowned stage actress who decides to give up her life of cultural refinement and cushy creature comforts to seek out a more spiritually fulfilling path. Will she ..
The Fallen Leaves
by Wilkie CollinsThe Fallen Leaves of the title are 'The people who have drawn blanks in the lottery of life...the friendless and the lonely, the wounded and the lost'. The novel was not well received and a planned Second Series, showing an unconventional marriage failing because of outside pressures, was never written.The novel follows the fortunes of four w..
The Frozen Deep
by Wilkie CollinsThe Frozen Deep was written by Collins during 1856, although conceived, cast and revised by Dickens. Collins was a friend of Charles Dickens, and together they produced a theatrical version of The Frozen Deep. The published edition was turned into a novella that reads like a play. There are five acts with a good deal of action, though I am no..