Wilkie Collins Authors In Context

Lyn Pykett offers a lively exploration of the novels of Wilkie Collins, author of the first recognised detective novel.

"This international collection of essays celebrates the 200th anniversary of Wilkie Collins's birth by exploring his multi-faceted impact on nineteenth-century culture. Examining his lesser-known and shorter works alongside the great novels, this volume provides new perspectives for both students and admirers fascinated by his complex fictions"--

In the first book centering on the collaborative relationship between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Lillian Nayder places their coauthored works in the context of the Victorian publishing industry and shows how their fiction and drama represent and reconfigure their sometimes strained relationship. She challenges the widely accepted image of Dickens as a mentor of younger writers such as Collins, points to the ways in which Dickens controlled and profited from his literary "satellites," and charts Collins's development as an increasingly significant and independent author. The pair's collaborations for Household Words and All the Year Round explicitly addressed Victorian labor disputes and political unrest, and Nayder reads the stories in terms of the social and imperial conflicts that both provided their themes and enabled Dickens and Collins to mediate their own personal and professional differences. Nayder's discussion of the collaboration and its principals is greatly enriched by archival research into unpublished and unfamiliar material, including the manuscripts of The Frozen Deep.

This selection of 11 essays charts the most important aspects of the developing debate about Wilkie Collins's fiction in the last 20 years. The book employs a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including reader response theory, narratology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, cultural materialism, and a range of feminisms. The essays examine Collins's fiction from several perspectives: structural, generic and political (including gender politics). They focus on an author preoccupied with the production of social and psychological identity, and with issues of class, gender, and power. If there is a single issue which permeates this collection, it is the question of the subversiveness of Collins's fiction or, alternatively, its retreat from and/or containment of a radical social critique or subversive impulses. The pros and cons of this debate are explored further in Lyn Pykett's introduction.

The novels of Charlotte and Emily Bronte have become canonical texts for the application of twentieth century literary and cultural theory. Along with the work of their sister, Anne, their texts are regarded as a sources of diversity in themselves, full of conflictual material which different schools of criticism have analysed and interpreted. This book shows how the Brontes writings engage with the major issues which dominate twentieth century theoretical work. The essays are grouped under broad schools of theory- biographical; feminist; marxist; psychoanalytical and postcolonial.

This collection of essays by international scholars celebrates the 200th anniversary of Wilkie Collins's birth by exploring his unconventional life alongside his works, critical responses to his writings and their afterlife, and the literary and cultural contexts which shaped his fiction. Topics discussed include gender, science and medicine, music, law, race and empire, media adaptations, neo-Victorianism, disability, and ethics. Along with an analysis of his novels, the essays included also recognize the importance of his short stories, journalism, and contributions to Victorian theatre, most notably illuminating the strong connections between sensation fiction and melodrama, as well as exploring his influence on film and TV. Engaging with yet also delving far beyond the famous novels, this volume promotes awareness of Collins' remarkable and diverse writerly achievements and paints a vivid portrait of an author whose fluctuating reputation among contemporary critics stands in stark contrast to his immense and still-enduring popularity.

This eclectic collection brings together a range of critical voices, from varying disciplinary backgrounds, to comment on the life and works of Wilkie Collins. A close friend of Dickens, Collins engaged with some of the nineteenth century’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. As this collection makes clear, he formed interesting connections with key figures in literature, art, theatre, medicine, and the law. As a result, his works often engaged with the period’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. Best remembered for spearheading the Sensation genre with The Woman in White and detective fiction with The Moonstone, Collins’s career actually encompassed a large amount of material that has remained relatively neglected until recently. Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays offers readings of previously unstudied sources while offering new perspectives on the author’s most canonical works.

In the autumn of 1873, Wilkie Collins followed the example of fellow literary celebrities Dickens and Thackeray, and began a six-month reading tour of America. This book places this tour within the American lyceum movement of the later nineteenth century.