Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

The Law and the Lady – Wilkie Collins

‘The Law and the Lady’ is one of the most ingenious and most repulsive of Wilkie Collins’s novels, and we doubt, if having begun, that anyone would leave it unfinished. The heroine marries a man and soon discovers that she is his second wife, and that he has been tried in Scotland for the murder of his first, – the jury returning a verdict of” Not proven,” which, not establishing his innocence, simply declared that the evidence was not sufficient to convict him. She resolves to devote her life to the task of proving her husband’s guiltlessness, and sets to work, without his knowledge. When he becomes aware that she has learned … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Dead Alive – Wilkie Collins

A curious story of two brothers who are tried for a murder and found guilty under strongly convicting circumstances. After pleading innocence of the crime, they strangely make a confession to the effect that they murdered the man, who at the last moment turns up alive. The author, in a note, says whatever seems improbable in the story is a fact, and whatever reads like truth is pure invention. Truth or fiction, however, the little book will while away an hour very pleasantly.

The Dead Alive.

Format: eBook.

The Dead Alive.

ISBN: 9783849658373

Excerpt from the text:

“I WANT to speak to you,” Naomi began “You don’t think ill of me for following … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The New Magdalen – Wilkie Collins

Though perhaps this story does not equal, from a literary point of view, some of Collins’s previous efforts-it being less sensational and less complicated in its plot-it is, nevertheless, one of the best he has ever written. It is an able and eloquent protest against the false state of society and that cruel sentiment which prevents an erring woman ever returning to the path of virtue. Aside from its moral purpose, the story is exceedingly interesting. It should be read thoughtfully by everyone.

The New Magdalen.

Format: eBook.

The New Magdalen.

ISBN: 9783849658366

Excerpt from the text:

IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.

Late in the evening a … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Man and Wife – Wilkie Collins

If the only test of fiction is that it shall secure interest, then Mr. Wilkie Collins has succeeded to the full with this novel. The construction is almost perfect, and the interest is so graduated, and the plot so skillfully developed, that no portion can be skipped without loss. Mr. Collins is facile princeps in invention, and introduces no detail that is not of importance in reference to the whole. His novels, indeed, are too complete and self-contained to wholly satisfy any taste that is still simple enough to look at life as it is with anything of the pause and wonder that must often overtake the disinterested observer. There are so many loose … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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 ...