Wilkie Collins A Life Of Sensation Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Wilkie Collins A Life Of Sensation book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation by Andrew Lycett Pdf
The definitive biography of Wilkie Collins: the Victorian novelist, playwright, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, who lived a life of sensation. Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, was the master of the Victorian sensation novel, but he also had a complex private life that could have come straight out of one of his bestselling novels. While his books focused on uncovering family secrets, Wilkie was determined to keep his own unconventional domestic arrangements – living with two women, neither of them his wife – hidden from the outside world. In this colourful investigative biography, set against the backdrop of Victorian London, Andrew Lycett brings to life one of England’s greatest writers and reveals a brilliant, contrary and sensual man, deeply committed to his work.
In this major biography, Catherine Peters explores the complicated life of Wilkie Collins, the greatest of the Victorian "Sensation" novelists and author of the famous Woman in White and The Moonstone. An intimate of Dickens and of the Pre-Raphaelites Holman Hunt and Millais, Collins was called the "king of inventors" by his publisher. On the surface, he was charming, unpretentious, and extremely good company, beloved by men and women. Beneath this façade, however, he was a complex and haunted man, addicted to laudanum, and his powerful, often violent novels revealed a dark side of Victorian life. He supported two common-law wives and their children, and as Peters shows, he provoked scandal by refusing to cloak his complicated love affairs in the customary hypocritical pretense of the period. Having discovered a hitherto unknown autobiography by Wilkie Collins's mother, Peters draws on this document and on thousands of Collins's unpublished letters to create this provocative picture of his life and times. She describes in detail the saga of his exhausting struggle for better copyright protection for authors, especially for English authors in the United States. She has also studied the manuscripts of his novels, plays, and stories, including those which he did not complete, finding that some of his neglected novels turn out to be much more interesting than most readers realize today. This edition of the book has been supplemented to include an appendix describing Collins's "Tahitian" novel. Written when he was twenty, the manuscript of this work, Ioláni, was thought to have disappeared, but it has recently been rediscovered and sold to a private collector. For any Collins enthusiast, or for anyone interested in the literary history of the Victorian period, The King of Inventors provides a vivid account of Collins's unusual personal life in the context of his literary and artistic friendships and of newly revealed facts about the two women with whom he shared his "double life." Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the complete works of Wilkie Collins’s. Examining his vast array of novels and short stories, this volume includes analysis of the social, historical, and political commentary Collins offered within his works, illuminating Collins as more than a successful crime and sensation author, or the fortunate recipient of Dicken’s grand patronage, but as a hard-thinking and lively-writing part of the rich mid-Victorian literary scene. Overall, Collins is seen as a master of narratives which deal with social and personal issues that were much debated in his fifty-year authorial period. Close attention is paid to the events, themes, and characterization in his fiction, revealing his analytic vigor and the literary power of that period and context. Delivering fresh insight into the variety and richness of Collins’ themes and arguments, this volume provides a key source of information and analysis on all Collins’ fiction.
'A writer of real gravitas and potency.' Ali Smith 'An extraordinary journey ... Engrossing, original and eloquent.' Helen Dunmore 'Elegiac and beautifully observed.' Observer 'Vivid and captivating.' Stylist I didn’t realise my mother was a person until I was thirteen years old and she pulled me out of bed, put me in the back of her car, and we left home and my dad with no explanations. I thought that Ma was all that she was and all that she had ever wanted to be. I was wrong... As Ma and Alex make their way from Virginia to California, each new state prompts stories and secrets of a life before Alex. Together they put to rest unsettled scores, heal old wounds, and search out lost friends. But Alex can't forget the life they've left behind.
If you like your mysteries with a liberal dash of prurient gossip and high-society drama, be sure to add Wilkie Collins' Jezebel's Daughter to your must-read list. This tautly suspenseful tale full of betrayal and unexpected plot twists is a worthy diversion.
The "Sensation Novel" ushered in the modern mystery genre. It was inaugurated by Wilkie Collins's best-seller The Woman in White in 1860. But this collection, selected by Peter Haining, reveals that Collins had actually been writing realistic stories of suspense for at least a decade before this. With dramatic plots that revolved around hidden secrets, bloody crimes, villainous schemes, and clever detective work all occurring in everyday settings, Wilkie Collins helped to shape a new genre that was worlds away from anything being written by his contemporaries--and one that was to have a far-reaching influence. Sensation Stories ranges from Collins's earliest tales and those published under the auspices of his great friend Charles Dickens to the title piece from his last, melancholic collection. Among several famous yarns and stories not published for over a hundred years is one featuring a pioneer female detective and another that has been called the first British detective story. There is a ghost story controversial for its eroticism, the first humorous or satirical detective story and a story that clearly presages The Woman in White, published two years later. Thrilling reads in their own right, all 10 stories showcase Wilkie Collins's towering contribution to the development of the mystery genre. Indeed, he is now regarded as the inventor of the modern detective story and the forefather of a crime fiction tradition that runs through Arthur Conan Doyle to Thomas Harris today.
Wilkie Collins: A Literary Life draws on recently available business and personal correspondence to establish a fresh portrait of one of Victorian Britain's busiest authors. The book takes in Collins's notoriously complicated private life as well as his work as a professional author in the changing world of Victorian publishing.
Wilkie Collins (Authors in Context) by Lyn Pykett Pdf
Wilkie Collins is mainly remembered for his best-selling sensation novel The Woman in White and his detective mystery The Moonstone , both published in the 1860s. However, in a literary career spanning nearly forty years he wrote over twenty novels, several plays, and numerous short stories in which his preoccupations with Victorian society are revealed. Irregular liaisons, the chaotic state of the marriage laws, social and psychological identity, and the interconnections between respectable society and the world of crime are recurring themes in Collins's fiction. Lyn Pykett looks at Collins's long and varied career in relation to the changing circumstances of his own life, a changing literary marketplace, and the changing worlds of nineteenth-century Britain, as well as his enduring legacy for modern writers and interpreters. The book includes a chronology of Collins's life and times, suggestions for further reading, websites, illustrations, and a comprehensive index. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Near-Death Experiences . . . and Others by Robert Gottlieb Pdf
A new collection of immersive essays from the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century This new collection from the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for The New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. The writings compiled here are as various as they are provocative: an extended probe into the world of post-death experiences; a sharp look at the biopics of transcendent figures such as Shakespeare, Molière, and Austen; a soap opera-ish movie account of an alleged affair between Chanel and Stravinsky; and a copious sampling of the dance reviews he’s been writing for The New York Observer for close to twenty years. A worthy successor to his expansive 2011 collection, Lives and Letters, and his admired 2016 memoir, Avid Reader, Near-Death Experiences displays the same insight and intellectual curiosity that have made Gottlieb, in the words of The New York Times’s Dwight Garner, “the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century.”