Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824, the son of the landscape painter William Collins. As a boy he spent two years with his family in Italy and France. He worked for a tea merchant and then studied law, becoming a barrister, though he never practised. His first published book was a biography of his father. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend; Collins wrote for Dickens's magazines, and the two collaborated on plays and fiction. His novel The Woman in White (1859–1860), a thrilling mystery told by several narrators, was first published as a serial in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round and was a huge success. The Moonstone (1868), about the theft of a precious diamond, established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel. Collins also wrote No Name, Armadale and many short stories and plays. From the 1850s he suffered from gout and took laudanum, a drug containing opium, to treat it. He died in London in 1889.

Wilkie Collins is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A professing Christian from a deeply religious family. Source: Wikipedia