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Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd Published date: 1999 Size: 5.25 x 8.25 inches Weight: 0.55 pounds
Publisher's Notes
When Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, the first detective novel in modern fiction, died in 1889 he shocked the Victorians by dividing his estate equally between two mistresses, Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd, and acknowledging Martha's three children as his own. In The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, William M. Clarke, married to Wilkie's great-granddaughter, Faith, pieces together the truth behind this menage a trois. He describes Collins' friendship with Dickens, with whom he spent wild weekends in London and Paris, as well as his many interesting encounters with other writers and artists of the day, including Coleridge, Wordsworth, Constable, Blake, Millais and Rosetti. This full biography brings to life one of the most prolific and successful Victorian novelists. First published in 1988, this new edition of the biography of 'the novelist who invented Sensation', includes for the first time the story of the recent belated discovery in New York of the manuscript of Collins' first unpublished novel Iolani.
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