Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

Miss or Mrs.? – Wilkie Collins

‘Miss or Mrs.?’ is a story in outline, and maybe the only instance in which Mr. Wilkie Collins has wasted his material; an entire novel might be constructed in his architectural style from its Incidents. There are several specimens of Mr. Wilkie Collins’s neat, precise humor in this story, and the rudiments of at least one capital character. We hope to meet Lady Winwood on a wider field of action, and should be very glad to hear details of her household policy, and the final pulverization of her ladyship’s step- daughters.

Miss or Mrs.?

Format: eBook.

Miss or Mrs.?.

ISBN: 9783849658359

Excerpt from the text:

The night had come to an end. The … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Poor Mrs. Finch – Wilkie Collins

Mr. Wilkie Collins brings to his work, along with other and valuable qualities, the special talent of the private detective and the criminal lawyer. Almost no modern novelist stands in any comparison with him for skill in constructing the engrenage, as a Frenchman would call it, of personal complication, for subtle delicacy in fitting together wheel and spring, pivot and pinion of his dramatic clockwork, in such fascinating interplay as shall lead the attention of the breathless spectator smoothly, imperceptibly, but inevitably to the final wind-up of the catastrophe. This skill in combining events is supplemented by, or rather cognate with, his shrewd analysis of character and motive. It is his favorite plan to … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Armadale – Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins has given us in this novel one more instance of his strange capacity for weaving extra plots. Armadale, from beginning to end, is a lurid labyrinth of improbabilities. It produces upon the reader the effect of a literary nightmare. Miss Gwilt, Mrs. Oldershaw, and Doctor Le Doux of the Sanatorium are enough to make any story in which they figure disagreeably sensational; and Mr. Collins seizes every possible opportunity of working up the horror they inspire to the highest point. If it were the object of art to make one’s audience uncomfortable without letting them know why, Mr. Wilkie Collins would be beyond all doubt a consummate artist. To the accomplishment of this object … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Blind Love – Wilkie Collins

It is on the true story of Baron Carl Ludwig von Scheurer, in which so many insurance companies were interested, that Wilkie Collins based the plot of his novel ‘Blind Love,’ a work which he did not live to complete by his own hand. In August 1889, when its publication in serial form had been under way for a couple of months, Mr. Collins realized that he would not be able to finish the story. So he sent for Mr. Walter Besant, and that versatile and rapid worker undertook the completion of the book. He has done it, as he says in the preface, to the best of his ability, but he is so conscious … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Legacy of Cain – Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins’ last-but-one novel was originally published in 1889. The Reverend Abel Gracedieu raises two daughters. One of them was adopted seventeen years before the story starts because her mother was executed for murdering her husband. The main question of the plot is whether this adoption will not end in a very bad away because the daughter is allegedly as evil and wicked as her mother ….

The Legacy of Cain.

Format: eBook.

The Legacy of Cain.

ISBN: 9783849658502

Excerpt from the text:

The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister start. The face … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Little Novels – Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins’ ‘Little Novels’ is a collection of ingenious stories, told with some of the marvellous skill that made the author of The Woman in White famous. Villany is frustrated by devious ways, and a mind must be much preoccupied indeed that cannot for a time lose itself in Mr. Collins’ ingenious combinations. Mr. Collins does not favor us with any wicked monk, and there is little of that coarseness which intrudes into several of his earlier stories. All over a fantastic read.

Little Novels.

Format: eBook.

Little Novels.

ISBN: 9783849658496

Excerpt from the text:

THE lady left the Gardens by the nearest gate; stopping to lower her veil before she turned into the … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...