Books by Wilkie Collins

Word count 31,770

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. Hence, 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.

At the centre of Hide and Seek (1854) a secret waits to be revealed. Why should the apparently respectable painter Valentine Blyth refuse to account for the presence in his household of the beautiful girl known as Madonna? It is not until his young friend Zack Thorpe, who is in rebellion against his repressive father, gets into bad company and meets a mysterious stranger that the secret of Madonna can be unravelled.Wilkie Collins's third novel, dedicated to his life-long friend Dickens, is a story in which excitement is combined with charm and humour. In its mixture of the everyday and the extraordinary, Hide and Seek forms a bridge between the domestic novel and the sensational fiction for which Collins later became famous.

Wilkie Collins is the only leading Victorian novelist whose letters have not been published. This authorised edition reproduces his selection of around 700 key letters of the 2,000 known to be in existence, some recently discovered.

Editedand with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?'This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale.The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.

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'.

Despite the grave misgivings of both their families, Valeria Brinton and Eustace Woodville are married. But before long the new bride begins to suspect a dark secret in her husband's past and when she discovers that he has been living under a false name, she determines to find out why he is concealing his true identity from her. Soon she must endure an even greater shock: the revelation that her husband has been on trial for poisoning his first wife. Convinced of his innocence, Valeria is prepared to do anything to clear her husband's name, and in so doing upturns the conventions of polite nineteenth century society.

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

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.

Magdalen and her sister Norah, beloved daughters of Mr and Mrs Vanstone, find themselves the victims of a catastrophic oversight. Their father has neglected to change his will, and when the girls are suddenly orphaned, their inheritance goes to their uncle. Now penniless, the conventional Norah takes up a position as a governess, but the defiant and tempestuous Magdalen cannot accept the loss of what is rightfully hers and decides to do whatever she can to win it back. With the help of cunning Captain Wragge, she concocts a scheme that involves disguise, deceit and astonishing self-transformation. In this compelling, labyrinthine story Wilkie Collins brilliantly demonstrates the gap between justice and the law, and in the subversive Magdalen he portrays one of the most exhilarating heroines of Victorian fiction.

The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself.

Wilkie Collins is the only leading Victorian novelist whose letters have not been published. This authorised edition reproduces his selection of around 700 key letters of the 2,000 known to be in existence, some recently discovered.

Da Walter Wildings moder dør, arver han et blomstrende vinimportfirma, som han beslutter at drive "som en stor familie". Under sine forberedelser til dette forehavende finder han ud af, at han er et "hittebarn", som hans moder har taget til sig i den tro, at han virkelig er hendes søn. Men den virkelige Walter Wilding var allerede tidligere taget ud af Hittebørnshospitalet, og Walter føler, at han har modtaget både navnet, moderens kærlighed og arven på et uretmæssigt grundlag. Han forsøger at finde den virkelige Walter Wilding, men alle spor ender blindt – der er Spærret.Da Wilding snart efter dør, testamenterer han sin kompagnon George Vendale forretningen og hele sin formue med den klausul, at han inden to år skal finde den virkelige arving, eller udbetale hele arven til Hittebørnshospitalet.Spærret er skrevet af Charles Dickens og Wilkie Collins i fællesskab. Fortællingen udgjorde julenummeret af Dickens' blad All the Year Round i 1867, og blev også til et skuespil – derfor hedder bogens dele "ouverture" og "akter" i stedet for "kapitler" – som havde premiere på Adelphi-teatret i London den 26. december 1867.

Da Sophonisba, som er en dame lidt op i årene, af sin læge opfordres til at søge luftfornyelse, flytter hun fra det landlige Tunbridge Wells ind til London, hvor hun bliver optaget af et mærkeligt forfaldent hus overfor sin nye bopæl, et hus, der tilsyneladende har været til leje i umindelige tider uden nogensinde at blive udlejet. Da hun en dag sidder og kigger på huset, opdager hun et øje i et vindue derovre, der kigger hende i møde et kort øjeblik.Det er rammehistorien i Et hus til leje, som er skrevet af Charles Dickens og Wilkie Collins i fællesskab. Derefter udfyldes rammen af fortællingerne Et Manchester ægteskab af Elizabeth Gaskell, Ud i samfundslivet af Charles Dickens, som begge handler om nogle tidligere beboere af lejehuset, og Trottles rapport, hvor gåden begynder at blive løst, og til sidst Endelig lejet ud af Dickens og Collins, som danner slutningen på rammehistorien og opløsningen af gåden.I den originale udgave findes endnu et kapitel af Adelaide Anne Procter, som består af tre digte. De er ikke medtaget i denne den vistnok eneste danske oversættelse fra 1889, men som Sophonisba rigtigt bemærker, så er det "smukke vers, men de bidrager ikke synderlig til gådens løsning." De er derfor heller ikke med i nærværende udgave.

Under den fransk-tyske krig i 1870 mødes to kvinder tilfældigt i et hus mellem de franske og tyske stillinger. Mercy Merrick er sygeplejerske med en fortid i en "Magdalene-stiftelse", dvs. et hjem for faldne kvinder, og Grace Roseberry, der står alene i verden, men er på vej til London for at få en plads som selskabsdame hos en fjern slægtning, lady Janet Roy.Grace bliver ramt af en tysk bombe og falder livløs om, og Mercy ser en chance for at befri sig for sin fortid og skaffe sig et bedre liv. Hun tilegner sig den dødes papirer og tøj og tager til London.Den virkelige Grace Roseberry er imidlertid ikke død, og dukker snart op for at kræve sine rettigheder. Alle anser hende for at være sindssyg, og i virkeligheden er Mercy måske en bedre Grace Roseberry, end Grace selv ville have været. Men kan hun leve med sit bedrag?