2. Historic sights included on the London Pass are
world famous 'must sees' such as the Tower of
London, Windsor Castle, St Paul’s
Cathedral, Tower Bridge and many more
landmarks that are certain to fascinate any visitor.
Visiting London is an unforgettable experience
and there is a true breadth of history going back
hundreds of years. Round almost every corner
there are landmark sights with their own
story, and architectural style.
3. One of the most important people is William Wilkie
Collins, or Wilkie. Today he is best known for The
Moonstone (1868), often regarded as the first
true detective novel, and The Woman in
White (1860), the archetypal sensation novel.
During his lifetime, however, he wrote over thirty
major books, well over a hundred articles, short
stories and essays, and a dozen or more plays.
4. The early years
Wilkie Collins was the elder son of William Collins
the celebrated landscape artist and portrait
painter and named after his godfather, Sir David
Wilkie. His childhood schooldays began in 1835 at
the Maida Hill Academy
5. Wilkie left school in 1841 and was apprenticed to the tea
merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand. It was here, in
what he called 'the prison on the Strand' that he began
his writing with his first signed publication, 'The Last
Stage Coachman' appearing in Douglas
Jerrold's Illuminated Magazine in August 1843. From
May 1846 Collins became a law student at Lincoln's Inn
and was called to the bar in 1851. He never practised his
profession although several lawyers feature prominently
in his subsequent novels. His father died in 1847 and his
first published book, The Memoirs of the Life of William
Collins, Esq., R.A., appeared the following year and
received good reviews. It was followed by an historical
novel, Antonina (1850) and three contemporary
novels, Basil (1852), Hide and Seek (1854) and The Dead
Secret (1857).
6. Despite his growing success, Collins's health began
to decline during the 1850s and 1860s, suffering
from what he always described as 'rheumatic gout'
or 'neuralgia'. These affected his eyes with
particular severity and he often needed the
services of a secretary - provided either by Frank
Beard, his doctor and lifelong friend, or Carrie
Graves. He visited numerous physicians and tried
various remedies including Turkish and electric
baths, Health spas, hypnotism and quinine.
Ultimately Beard prescribed opium in the form of
laudanum as a pain-killer and sedative, but always
for purely medical reasons. Over the years Collins
developed an enormous tolerance and eventually
took daily 'more laudanum than would have
sufficed to kill a ship's crew or company of soldiers
7. The Final Years
During the 1880s, Wilkie's always delicate health
continued to decline. Breathing difficulties due to
heart problems became more common and he
resorted to capsules of amyl nitrate and hypophosphate. In January 1889 he was involved in an
accident and thrown from a cab by the force of
the collision. There followed a severe of attack of
bronchitis. He suffered a stroke on 30 June and
with further complications died on 23 September.
8. Many of Collins's later novels do not possess
the force and freshness of his earlier works.
Nevertheless, he remained immensely
popular with the reading public and the
Chatto & Windus collected edition continued
to be issued for many years after his death.
Now, a century later, there has been a great
revival in interest both in his enigmatic
lifestyle and his unique gift as a master storyteller and constructor of labyrinthine plots.
9. Some novels
The Woman in White
It was during the 1860s that Collins achieved
enduring fame with his four major novels, The
Woman in White (1860), No
Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The
Moonstone (1868). The first of these was
published in Dickens new journal, All the Year
Round from November 1859 to August 1860. It
was received with great popular acclaim and ran
to seven editions in 1860, alone.
10. • The Moonstone
T. S. Eliot described The Moonstone as the first and
greatest of English detective novels'. It is certainly a
landmark in the history of crime fiction and has a
strong claim to having established detective
fiction as a genre. It influenced Collins's successors
from Trollope and Conan Doyle onwards and has
set the standard by which other detective novels
are judged. During its serialization in All the Year
Round there were crowds of anxious readers
outside the publishers' offices in Wellington Street
waiting for the next installment. Like The Woman in
White, it has never been out of print
11. Armadale
Armadale is Collins's longest novel with a complex
story spanning two generations of the Armadale
family. It incorporates several of his favorite
themes including the
supernatural, identity, murder and detection and
features a beautiful red-headed female villain.
12. No Name
No Name is the story of the heroine's attempts
to regain her family fortune and represents a
plea by Collins against the then prevailing laws
on inheritance and illegitimacy. It may be
regarded as an early attempt at the didactic
novel which Collins pursued more vigorously
from the 1870s when he came under the
influence of Charles Reade.
