Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

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 ...

Rambles Beyond Railways – Wilkie Collins

This volume contains an account of a pedestrian tour by Mr. Collins in Cornwall, a county to which railways had not yet penetrated at his time. Leaving Plymouth behind him, the author, and his artist friend, Mr. Brandling, threaded the county from St. Germains to the Lizard and the Land’s-End; visiting the most remarkable places, whether of art or nature, and whether the natural attractions were of the quietly beautiful, the desolate, or the magnificent kind. Mr. Collins, as a pedestrian, was of necessity thrown much among the people; and he has picked up many traits of their character, as well as some curious traditions. There are also matters of a more utilitarian cast, … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

After Dark – Wilkie Collins

The setting for the six stories in this book is an episode in the life of a travelling portrait-painter, which we are made to learn through the charmingly simple narrative of his wife’s diary. Disabled for a time by weakness of the eyes from working at his profession, his wife suggests that he should fill up the consequent deficit in their purse by dictating to her “after dark,” when her household work is done, some of the good stories he has gathered in the course of his wanderings. The well-known necessity for getting a “sitter” to talk of something that will interest him and make him forget that he has to look dignified, renders the … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Ostler – Wilkie Collins

‘The Ostler” was originally published in 1855 as a short story, which later became the foundation for the much longer story ‘The Dream Woman.’ It is one of Wilkie Collins’ first supernatural stories, revolving around the forty-year-old Isaac Scatchard, who has a very strange dream of a young woman – or wasn’t it a dream, but a ghost? Seven years later he even gets more lost when he encounters a woman who looks very much like his strange dream creature ….

The Ostler.

Format: eBook.

The Ostler.

ISBN: 9783849658137

Excerpt from the text:

I

“Hullo, there! Hostler! Hullo-o-o!”

“My dear! why don’t you look for the bell?”

“I have looked—there is no bell.”

“And … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Hide and Seek – Wilkie Collins

One of the principal characters in Mr. Collins’s “Hide and Seek” is an artist; but the writer has not sketched him as labouring in his vocation amid alternations of despair and hope. “The painter in this story,” he says, “only assumes to be a homely study from nature, done by a student who has had more opportunities than most men, out of the profession, of observing what the novelties of artist-life, and the eccentricities of artist-character, are really like, when they are looked at close. It may be necessary to mention this, by way of warning, as I have ventured on the startling novelty, in fiction, of trying to make an artist interesting, without … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Frozen Deep – Wilkie Collins

The main actor in this play, that was co-written with Mr. Charles Dickens, is Richard Wardour, a man of violent passions, who has been supplanted in the affections of the woman to whom he was ardently attached. He discovers his successful rival in a comrade in an arctic expedition. Eager, mad for revenge, he determines to kill him. They go forth together in the rear of a party dispatched in search of succor, Richard Wardour with murder in his thoughts, Frank Aldersley unsuspecting, con¿ding. Companionship in suffering restores the heart of humanity to Richard Wardour. Instead of being the destroyer of his rival, he becomes his savior.

The Frozen Deep.

Format: eBook.

The Frozen … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Rogue’s Life – Wilkie Collins

‘A Rogue’s Life’ was published in a magazine some twenty years before it was made into a book. It is a very clever story, and the interest is well sustained throughout. There is just about enough of it, inasmuch as a short tale like this is more interesting than some of the author’s longer works, wherein the complicated plots and lengthened mysteries are too apt to weary the reader before his curiosity is satisfied. We cannot help feeling quite an affection for the “Rogue,” perhaps because most of the other characters in the story are as selfish, more wicked, and not so frankly conceited as he is, and have none of his courage, audacity, … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...