Biography of Wilkie Collins

Yellow-ghost stories

8 January 1824
23 September 1889
Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824, eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. At the age of thirteen she moved with her family to Italy and stays there for about two years. His passion for fiction is stimulated even more by his experience in college. He started writing stories of fantasy to escape from the oppression of a bully who, as he himself says, awakens his creative potential. Wilkie unfortunately is an easy victim of jokes and scorn of his fellow students, because from birth is haunted by a pleasant aspect and almost deformed: it is, in fact, very low, but with disproportionate heads and chests and very small hands and feet. The father, despite the artistic inclinations of child, wants to start a career in the legal profession or in the tea trade.
For a short time he worked as an apprentice to trade tea, and defines the merchant apprenticeship a veritable prison feeding her adamant desire to become a writer. Despite the clashes with his father, of which can not stand the stiffness especially religious, ends up studying law but never practiced as a lawyer. Knowledge of the law will still be useful for his work as a writer: the lawyers are the absolute protagonists of many of his novels. The first book he writes and publishes in 1848 is a biography. One of the most important meetings of the life of the young aspiring writer is to, in 1851, with Charles Dickens, of which becomes and stays for life not only man, but also travel companion: the two roam together in the most forgotten in London and Paris. He collaborated for five years at magazines Dickensian "Household Words" and "All the year Round" and the same Dickens talking commends the hard work and dedication.
To tie the two writers is also the common passion for Theatre: Charles Dickens, in fact, acted in two operas written by his brotherly friend and colleague. Throughout his life the unfortunate writer suffers from gout, rheumatic pain and serious eye problems. To relieve the pain of being inflicted, the opium is prescribed for therapeutic purposes. But before long, Collins get addicted: addiction that will last throughout her life with frequent moments of real excess. Wilkie Collins achieves popularity in 1860 with the novel "the woman in white". The novel, published in accordance with the tradition of the time serials, inaugurates the genre of crime fiction and is a mistaken identity centered on the similarity between the two female leads. One of the two mad Anne Catherick, the protagonist of the novel meets at night in a London Park completely dressed in white.
To inspire the writer is the real meeting in 1858 in Rengent's Park in London with a female ghost completely shrouded in a white robe. The fleeting appearance fascinates and intrigues me so much to get him to follow her. The woman fled from a villa in the park where it is held captive and treated with medical practices of Mesmerism, never recognized by official medicine. The woman is Caroline Graves, a widow with a young daughter. Wilkie and Caroline weave a relationship that will last for thirty years, but never marry. Their relationship never breaks despite the writer married couples, with a false name, the 19-year-old maid of her mother, with whom he has three children, all baptized with the fake name of both spouses. Caroline herself remarried but lives with her new husband only for three years and then return to live permanently with Wilkie Collins, who will continue to lead until his death a kind of double life. The success of "the woman in white" does not remain isolated, received a favorable welcome even the next several novels.
The most known are: "Armadale" (1866) "the Moonstone" (1868). It is this last novel to be considered the father of detective fiction as stated by the writer T.S. Eliot. The novel was published in serial form, and, with each new issue of the magazine, an increasingly anxious waiting to follow the investigation to find out who has stolen the precious Indian diamond that gives the title to the work, and that is the subject of a terrible curse. Despite the illness, Collins is a very prolific writer in later years continues to write both novels and short stories. Among the novels: "the law and the Lady" (1875), "man and woman" (1870), "the daughter of Jezebel" (1880). Since 1880 the writer's health worsens even more. In 1889 as a result of an accident in the carriage begins to suffer from lung problems; Wilkie Collins dies in London on 23 September 1889 at the age of 65 years.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.