Wilkie Collins (Authors in Context)

by Pykett, Lyn

• ISBN13: 9780192840349
• ISBN10: 0192840347
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In a literary career spanning over forty years, Wilkie Collins wrote over twenty novels, several plays, and numerous short stories. However, he is mainly remembered for his best-selling sensation novel The Woman in White. Irregular liasons, the chaotic state of the marriage laws, social and psychological identity, and the interconnections between respectable society and the world of crime are recurring themes in Collins's fiction. In this lively, accessible, and critically topical exploration of his novels, Lyn Pykett looks at Collins's long and varied career in relation to the changing circumstances of his own life, a changing literary marketplace, and the changing worlds of nineteenth-century Britain, as well as his enduring legacy for modern writers and interpreters. The volume includes a chronology of Collins's life and times, a comprehensive index, websites, illustrations, and suggestions for further reading.

Author Biography

Lyn Pykett is a Professor of English and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
A Chronology of Wilkie Collins	ix
Abbreviations	xviii
The Life of Wilkie Collins	1	(26)
Childhood and the Education of a Storyteller	2	(4)
Collins's Literary Apprenticeship	6	(5)
The Dickens Years	11	(5)
Family Secrets and Secret Families	16	(6)
The Pains of Literary Labour	22	(5)
The Social Context	27	(44)
Protest and Reform	32	(7)
Women, the Law, and Law Reform	39	(4)
Crime, Criminality, and Policing	43	(4)
Gender and Sexuality	47	(4)
Class	51	(4)
Education	55	(3)
Religion	58	(8)
Empire and Race	66	(5)
The Literary Context	71	(40)
Novel Reading and Novel Readers	72	(4)
The Production and Distribution of the Novel	76	(8)
The Forms of the Novel	84	(9)
The Novel and the Theatre	93	(4)
The Novelist as Journalist and Journeyman-of-Letters	97	(4)
Collins and the Art of the Novel	101	(4)
Collins and the Reviewers	105	(6)
Masters, Servants, and Married Women: Class and Social Mobility in Collins's Novels	111	(27)
Class	112	(11)
Gender	123	(6)
Marriage, Family, and the Law	129	(9)
Sex, Crime, Madness, and Empire	138	(27)
Sexual Mores and Social Evils	138	(8)
Criminality and Roguery in Respectable Society	146	(3)
Madness and its Treatment	149	(6)
Race, Foreigners, and Empire	155	(10)
Psychology and Science in Collins's Novels	165	(27)
Mesmerism, Dreams, and the Unconscious in Collins's Writings of the 1850s and 1860s	165	(13)
The Sensation Novel and Nineteenth-Century Medical and Psychological Theories	178	(3)
Collins and the Discourses of Degeneration	181	(5)
Science and Scientists	186	(6)
Recontextualizing Collins: The Afterlife of Collins's Novels	192	(35)
Collins on Film and Television	196	(13)
Collins in Print	209	(4)
Collins in Criticism	213	(14)
Notes	227	(10)
Further Reading	237	(6)
Websites	243	(1)
Film and Television Adaptations	244	(1)
Index	245