Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was born on 8th January 1824 in Marylebone, London. 

The family moved several times in his early years before, at 12, they travelled to France and Italy for 2 years where the sights and atmosphere made a deep and lasting impression on him.

He resumed his education at Mr Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, Islington. Here, he began his literary career under unusual circumstances: the school bully would give him no peace until he had been told a bedtime story. This ‘little brute’ helped create one of England’s greatest writers. 

On leaving school, in 1841, he became a clerk at a tea merchant before, 2 years later, publishing his first short story. However, his first novel was rejected and remained so during his lifetime. 

A brief stint at Lincoln’s Inn to please his father and to acquire a steady income was halted by his father’s death. Collins then wrote and published his fathers’ memoirs. He then completed his legal education though he would never practice. 

In March 1851, he was introduced to Charles Dickens and there now started a period of sustained literary output and a remarkable lifelong friendship. His stories were published in Dicken’s magazines, and he toured with Dicken’s theatrical before the two of them travelled to the Continent.

By the early 1860’s worrying signs of ill-health appeared with rheumatic gout. As it worsened, he sought respite and cures in German spa towns and gave up writing to help his recuperation.

His personal life had become very complicated. He was living with the widowed Caroline Graves and conducting an affair with a much younger Martha Rudd. With the serialised release of ‘The Moonstone’ and vicious attacks of gout Caroline left him and married another. Collins was now prescribed opium and was soon its lifelong dependent. Martha bore him two children and with the return of a now divorced Caroline Graves he now divided his time between the two women.

In 1874 he set aside writing to tour North America on a reading tour.

Throughout his later years he continued to write and publish. In all 30 novels, 14 plays, 60 short stories and over a 100 non-fiction essays as well as many more collaborations with Dickens.

In 1884 the Society of Authors elected him as it’s Vice-President.

Wilkie Collins died from a paralytic stroke on September 23rd, 1889, in London. He was 65.

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