Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was an English novelist and playwright, a friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens. The Woman in White and The Moonstone made him a master of the sensation novel and one of the founders of the detective story.
A painter's son
William Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824, the son of the landscape painter William Collins and named after his godfather, the Scottish painter David Wilkie. He spent two years of his childhood in Italy with his family.
He worked for a tea merchant, then studied law and was called to the bar, but never practised. His first published book was a biography of his father (1848).
Dickens
Collins met Charles Dickens in 1851 through amateur theatricals. They became close friends, travelled together and wrote stories and plays jointly; Collins became a regular contributor to Dickens's magazines Household Words and All the Year Round.
The Woman in White, serialised in All the Year Round in 1859–1860, was a huge success, followed by No Name, Armadale and The Moonstone (1868).
Later years
Collins suffered from gout and took increasing doses of laudanum, an opium preparation, to relieve the pain. He never married, but lived with Caroline Graves and had three children with Martha Rudd, who lived under the name of Mrs Dawson.
He continued to write novels and plays until his death in London on 23 September 1889. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Anecdotes
Merchandise for a novel
The success of The Woman in White was such that shops sold 'Woman in White' perfume, bonnets and cloaks, and waltzes were named after it.
A lifelong double household
Collins maintained two households for years, one with Caroline Graves and her daughter, the other with Martha Rudd and their three children, a few streets apart in London.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Moonstone?
A novel of 1868 about the theft of a great yellow Indian diamond from a country house in Yorkshire, investigated by Sergeant Cuff. T. S. Eliot called it the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.
What is a sensation novel?
A popular genre of the 1860s mixing crime, secrets, madness and bigamy in respectable settings, of which Collins was the leading writer.
Was Wilkie Collins a friend of Dickens?
Yes, a close friend and collaborator from 1851 until Dickens's death in 1870; Collins's brother Charles married Dickens's daughter Kate.