Archiv der Kategorie: Collins, Wilkie

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

“I’m sick to death of novels with an earnest purpose. I’m sick to death of outbursts of eloquence, and large-minded philanthropy, and graphic descriptions, and unsparing anatomy of the human heart, and all that sort of thing. Good gracious me ! Isn’t it the original intention or purpose, or whatever you call it, of a work of fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story? And how many of these books, I should like to know, do that? Why, so far as telling a story is concerned, the greater part of them might as well be sermons as novels. Oh, dear me! what I want is something that seizes hold of my interest, and … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

No Thoroughfare – Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens

The joint-effort of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins, apart from its merits or demerits, must excite curiosity and interest. It is clear that in ” No Thoroughfare ” the latter gentleman has had the lion’s share of the labour, whatever of lion’s share may fall to him besides. Mr. Dickens’s portion is merely incidental, though some of his touches are surpassing fine and unmistakably marked. Mr. Collins’s superb inventive faculty shows itself throughout, though under a little restriction here – unfolding, doubling up, coiling, and uncoiling in its brilliant, baffling, serpentine fashion. And the result is exactly such as might be expected. Mr. Wilding is a little over-done, but full of humor … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

My Miscellanies – Wilkie Collins

The author of ‘The Woman in White’ and of ‘No Name’ has had reprinted and published a collection of articles contributed by him to Household Words, and perhaps to other periodicals. The two papers which will attract most attention are probably those entitled respectively, “To Think, or Be Thought For,” and “Dramatic Grub-street,” inasmuch as upon their first appearance they provoked both private and public remonstrance, and they are now reprinted because Mr. Collins has seen a reason to abandon the convictions the expression of which called down upon him the aforesaid remonstrances. It is undoubted that this publication did not add much to the author’s brilliant fame, but it is useful as a sort … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

No Name – Wilkie Collins

The special charm of ‘No Name’ is the uncertainty in which the reader is kept. The most experienced of novel-readers is unable to predict whether Magdalen succeeds in her scheme, or marries Capt. Kirke, or retires from the scene to die, baffled and broken-hearted. Each crisis in the progress of the story takes the public by surprise. The death of the elder Vanstone, the marriage of Magdalen with his son, the trust by which Noel Vanstone prolongs the contest, even after his decease -to quote the word which he himself preferred to the vulgar one of ‘death’ – are all startling surprises, unpredicted and unforeseen Much higher praise cannot be given. There is, too, both … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

This extraordinary work ranks among the foremost purely melodramatic or sensation novels of modern times. Mr. Collins has thrown a force and power into this story, of which the reader has only seen intimations in his former works. After opening the narrative with a cheerful sketch of Professor Pesea, an Italian Refugee, combining in his small person all the pleasant traits of his nation, the author at once begins his work, and in a few sentences throws a weird and mystic glow over the story, which we feel to deepen and extend, until the disclosure of the plot by the discovery of the register and subsequent death of Sir Percival Glyde. This effort … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Queen of Hearts – Wilkie Collins

Mr. Wilkie Collins can tell a story well, and he has an ingenious knack of stringing stories together. After Dark consisted of a series of stories, and admirable they were, and ‘The Queen of Hearts’ is a work of the same description. The author lives in the region of fiction; but he does not aim at the higher objects contemplated by the more gifted writers of his class. He does not affect to be profound, philosophical, or didactic. His great object is so to write as to sustain interest and to amuse. But, though he does not aim at anything beyond that, thanks to his sympathies with many of the better qualities of … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Haunted House – Wilkie Collins (and others)

The stories in this book, originally published as a double number of Dickens’ ‘All Year Round’-magazine, come from the likes of Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Procter, George Sala and Hesba Stretton. Included are ‘The Mortals in the House’, ‘The Ghost in the Clock Room’, ‘The Ghost in the Double Room’, ‘The Ghost in the Picture Room’, ‘The Ghost in the Cupboard Room’, ‘The Ghost in Master H.’s Room’, ‘The Ghost in the Garden Room’ and ‘The Ghost in the Corner Room.’

The Haunted House.

Format: eBook.

The Haunted House.

ISBN: 9783849658199

Excerpt from the text:

Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A House to Let – Wilkie Collins (and others)

A Christmas and New Year’s Story. Though totally unlike any of Dickens’ Christmas stories of former years, this is by no means inferior to the best of them. It may not be so highly imaginative as the first of his productions of the kind, but it evinces even greater depth. Cunningly interwoven with the main plot of ‘A House To Let’ are three stories. The story of ‘The Manchester Marriage,’ contains two or three unexaggerated sketches of character. one of them, that of Mr. Openshaw, as new to fiction as it is true to life. To what artist we are indebted for the sketch few readers can fail to discover. It … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Mr. Wray’s Cash Box – Wilkie Collins

A good bookshelf is not complete without this charming little tale. It is founded on what was related to the author as a fact, as to the first obtaining of the well-known cast of the face of Shakespeare, by a stonemason, who was repairing the church at Stratford-on Avon. He was found out, and by the local authorities forthwith threatened with severe penalties; and not knowing how far his deed was culpable, and their threats dangerous, he thought it best to make a hasty retreat from the place with his treasure. It was only for love and admiration of the poet that he had been prompted to procure the memorial for himself, but … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Basil – Wilkie Collins

Although ‘Basil’ is a story of today, although all its accidental environments are of the most ordinary character, although the scene is laid in a scarce-finished suburban square (say in Brompton or Camden Town), although some of the personages are nothing more romantic than London linen-drapers, although the whole action of the drama rises out of an every-day omnibus adventure, it is a story remarkable for nothing so much as its intensity – for the powerful excitement which it must produce in every breast, not absolutely containing a mass of stone in place of a human heart. A romance that is are admirable in its very own way.

Basil.

Format: eBook.

Basil.

ISBN: 9783849658090

Excerpt … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...