40 Facts About Wilkie Collins

1.

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White, a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone, which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.

2.

Wilkie Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but became addicted to the opium he took for his gout, so that his health and writing quality declined in the 1870s and 1880s.

3.

Wilkie Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, London, the son of William Wilkie Collins, a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, and his wife, Harriet Geddes.

4.

Between 1829 and 1830, the Wilkie Collins family moved twice, first to Hampstead Square and then to Porchester Terrace, Bayswater.

5.

In 1835, Wilkie Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy.

6.

Wilkie Collins learned Italian while in Italy and began learning French, in which he would eventually become fluent.

7.

One boy forced Wilkie Collins to tell him a story every night before allowing him to go to sleep.

8.

Wilkie Collins disliked his clerical work but worked for the company for more than five years.

9.

Wilkie Collins started writing and published his first story, "The Last Stage Coachman", in the Illuminated Magazine in August 1843.

10.

William Wilkie Collins had intended his first son to become a clergyman and was disappointed in his son's lack of interest.

11.

At his father's insistence, Wilkie Collins instead entered Lincoln's Inn in 1846, to study law; his father wanted him to have a steady income.

12.

Wilkie Collins showed only a slight interest in law and spent most of his time with friends and on working on a second novel, Antonina, or the Fall of Rome.

13.

In 1849, Wilkie Collins exhibited a painting, The Smugglers' Retreat, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition.

14.

Wilkie Collins went on a walking tour of Cornwall with artist Henry Brandling in July and August 1850.

15.

Wilkie Collins managed to complete his legal studies and was called to the bar in 1851.

16.

Around then, Wilkie Collins began using laudanum regularly to treat his gout.

17.

Wilkie Collins became addicted and struggled with that problem later in life.

18.

Wilkie Collins joined the staff of Household Words in October 1856.

19.

In 1858 Wilkie Collins collaborated with Dickens and other writers on the story "A House to Let".

20.

The novels Wilkie Collins published in the 1860s are the best and most enduring of his career.

21.

Wilkie Collins's rising success as a writer allowed Collins to resign his post with All the Year Round in 1862 and focus on his novels.

22.

Wilkie Collins began a friendship with photographer Napoleon Sarony, who took several portraits of him.

23.

In 1884, Wilkie Collins was elected Vice-President of the Society of Authors, which had been founded by his friend and fellow novelist Walter Besant.

24.

Wilkie Collins was often unable to leave home and had difficulty writing.

25.

Wilkie Collins used his legal background to help protect other writers from copyright infringement of their works.

26.

Wilkie Collins's writing became a way for him to fight his illness without allowing it to keep him bedridden.

27.

Wilkie Collins is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, West London.

28.

Wilkie Collins's headstone describes him as the author of The Woman in White.

29.

In 1858 Wilkie Collins began living with Caroline Graves and her daughter Harriet.

30.

Wilkie Collins treated Harriet, whom he called Carrie, as his own daughter, and helped to provide for her education.

31.

Wilkie Collins disliked the institution of marriage, but remained dedicated to Caroline and Harriet, considering them to be his family.

32.

Wilkie Collins left him while he wrote The Moonstone when he was suffering an attack of acute gout.

33.

Wilkie Collins married a younger man named Joseph Clow, but after two years, she returned to Collins.

34.

In 1868, Wilkie Collins met Martha Rudd in Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, and the two began a liaison.

35.

Wilkie Collins was 19 years old and from a large, poor family.

36.

When he was with Martha, Wilkie Collins assumed the name William Dawson, and she and their children used the last name of Dawson themselves.

37.

Wilkie Collins's works were classified at the time as "sensation novels", a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.

38.

Wilkie Collins wrote penetratingly on the plight of women and on the social and domestic issues of his time.

39.

In May 1855, Wilkie Collins sent the finished play to Dickens, who enthusiastically took over the production.

40.

Wilkie Collins enjoyed ten years of success after publishing The Woman in White in 1859.