A gripping short biography of the extraordinary Wilkie Collins, author
of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, two early masterpieces of
mystery and detection.
Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely
nearsighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colorful clothes, Wilkie
Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was nonetheless a charmer,
befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to
women--and avidly read by generations of readers. Peter Ackroyd follows
his hero, the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists, from
Collins' childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling
beginnings as a writer, his years of fame, and his lifelong friendship
with that other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. In addition to
his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone--often called the first true
detective novel--and the sensational The Woman in White, he produced
an intriguing array of lesser known works. Told with Ackroyd's
inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great
storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humor and sympathetic
understanding.