Wilkie Collins: Pioneer of the Detective Novel
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868). The Moonstone established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
Early Life and Education
Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, London, the son of William Collins, a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, and his wife, Harriet Geddes. He was named after his father but became known by his middle name, which honoured his godfather, the painter David Wilkie. His brother Charles Allston Collins was born in 1828.
The family moved several times during Collins’s childhood, settling at Porchester Terrace, Bayswater by 1830. He received his early education from his mother at home. His family was deeply religious, and his mother enforced strict church attendance, which Wilkie disliked. In 1835 he began attending school at the Maida Vale academy. Between 1836 and 1838, he lived with his parents in Italy and France, where he learned Italian and began learning French, eventually becoming fluent in both languages.
From 1838 to 1840, Collins attended Reverend Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, where he was bullied. One schoolmate forced him to tell a story every night before allowing him to sleep. Collins later reflected on this experience: “It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware…. When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure.”
In late 1840, at nearly seventeen, Collins was apprenticed as a clerk to the tea merchant firm Antrobus & Co, owned by a friend of his father. He disliked clerical work but remained with the company for more than five years. At his father’s insistence, Collins entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1846 to study law, though he showed only slight interest in the profession and spent most of his time writing and with friends.
Career and Achievements
Collins began his writing career while still working as a clerk. He published his first story, “The Last Stage Coachman,” in the Illuminated Magazine in August 1843. In 1844 he travelled to Paris with Charles Ward. That same year he wrote his first novel, Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance, which Chapman and Hall rejected in 1845. The novel remained unpublished during his lifetime, as Collins later explained that the publisher found it impossible to put his name on the title page of such a work.
After his father’s death in 1847, Collins produced his first published book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, published in 1848. His novel Antonina was published by Richard Bentley in February 1850. Collins managed to complete his legal studies and was called to the bar in 1851, though he never formally practised law. He used his legal knowledge extensively in his novels.
An instrumental event occurred in March 1851 when Collins was introduced to Charles Dickens by their mutual friend, painter Augustus Egg. They became lifelong friends and collaborators. In May 1851, Collins acted with Dickens in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play Not So Bad As We Seem, performed before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Collins’s story “A Terribly Strange Bed” appeared in Dickens’s journal Household Words in April 1852, the first of several contributions to Dickens’s publications.
Collins’s novel Basil was published by Bentley in November 1852. During the writing of Hide and Seek in early 1853, he suffered what was probably his first attack of gout, a condition that would plague him for the rest of his life. He was ill from April to early July 1853 and subsequently stayed with Dickens in Boulogne from July to September.
By the 1860s, Collins had gained financial stability and an international following. The Woman in White, published in 1860, became a major success as a mystery novel and early sensation novel. The Moonstone, published in 1868, further cemented his reputation by establishing foundational conventions of the detective novel and the police procedural.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Collins’s health declined after he became addicted to opium, which he took for his gout. The quality of his artistic output suffered correspondingly during this period. Collins criticised the institution of marriage throughout his life. He maintained relationships with two women: widow Caroline Graves, with whom he lived for most of his life and whose daughter he treated as his own, and the younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.
Notable Events and Milestones
Collins published his first story in August 1843 while still working as a clerk. His introduction to Charles Dickens in March 1851 marked a turning point in his career, leading to decades of collaboration and friendship. In May 1851, he performed before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Not So Bad As We Seem. His first contribution to Household Words appeared in April 1852.
In 1849, Collins exhibited a painting titled The Smugglers’ Retreat at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. In July and August 1850, he undertook a walking tour of Cornwall with artist Henry Brandling, later writing an account of their travels which Brandling illustrated. The publication of The Woman in White in 1860 and The Moonstone in 1868 represented the peaks of his literary achievement.
Additional Resources
Wilkie Collins remains one of the most significant figures in Victorian literature, particularly for his pioneering work in the detective and sensation novel genres. Readers seeking more detailed information about his life, works, and literary influence can consult comprehensive biographical sources and the full Wikipedia entry, which provides extensive documentation of his career, personal relationships, and lasting impact on English fiction.
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