The document provides background information on Wilkie Collins' novel "The Woman in White". It discusses how the novel was groundbreaking as one of the earliest mystery/sensation novels. It became hugely popular upon its release in 1860, establishing Collins' reputation. The summary also touches on Collins' unconventional personal life and relationships, and how sensation novels explored social anxieties through dramatic plot twists and challenges to typical gender norms.

1. The Woman in White
'This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure and what
a Man's resolution can achieve.'

2. • Published in 1860, one of the two novels (with The
Moonstone) for which Collins is most famous. It firmly
established his reputation with the reading public and
helped raise the circulation of All the Year Round. As
Smith, Elder found to their cost, 'everyone was raving
about it.' S. M. Ellis described how The Woman in White
was so popular that 'every possible commodity was
labelled "Woman in White". There were "Woman in
White" cloaks and bonnets, "Woman in White" perfumes
and all manner of toilet requisites,
• Prince Albert read the book and approved. Thackeray
was engrossed from morning to sunset, and Gladstone
found the story so absorbing that he missed a visit to the
theatre. The Woman in White has never been out of
print since its first publication. In the twentieth century
there have been theatre, film, television and musical
adaptations and even a comic-strip version.

3. Wilkie Collins

4. • William Wilkie Collins, or Wilkie as he was known to his friends and
readers, was born in London's Marylebone where he lived more or
less continuously for 65 years. 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.
•
• He lived an unconventional, Bohemian lifestyle, loved good food and
wine to excess, wore flamboyant clothes, travelled abroad
frequently, formed long-term relationships with two women but
married neither, and took vast quantities of opium over many years
to relieve the symptoms of ill health. Collins's circle of friends
included many pre-eminent figures of the day. He knew the major
writers, particularly Charles Dickens with whom he regularly
collaborated, as well as a host of minor novelists. His friends and
acquaintances included some of the foremost artists, playwrights,
theatrical personalities, musicians, publishers, physicians and
society figures of the time. Collins's unorthodox lifestyle reveals a
cynical regard for the Victorian establishment. This view is reflected
in his books together with a sense of humour and a profound
understanding for many of the then prevailing social injustices.

5. 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, followed by a two year interruption when he
accompanied his parents and younger brother, Charles,
to France and Italy from September 1836 to August
1838. He later recalled that he had learned more in Italy
'which has been of use to me, among the scenery, the
pictures, and the people, than I ever learned at school.'
He also claimed that he had fallen in love for the first
time in Rome at the age of 12 or 13.

6. The Elephant Man
• Returning to England, his schooling continued at Cole's
boarding school at 39 Highbury Place. It was here that
he began his career as a storyteller to appease the
dormitory bully, later recalling that 'it was this brute who
first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of
which but for him I might never have been aware.' His
appearance was distinctive since he was born with a
prominent bulge on the right side of his forehead. He
was only five feet six inches tall but with a
disproportionately large head and shoulders. His hands
and feet were particularly small and pictures from the
age of 21 show him wearing spectacles.

7. • 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).

8. A Dickens of a Collins….
• During the 1850s, however, Wilkie's main income was derived from
journalism with numerous contributions to Bentley's Miscellany, The
Leader and more particularly Dickens's Household Words. He had
first met Dickens in 1851 through the introduction of Augustus Egg.
Collins, always keen on amateur theatricals, needed little
persuasion to join the great man's company for his production of
Bulwer-Lyttons's Not so Bad as We Seem, written to raise money for
the Guild of Literature and Art. A firm friendship developed between
the two writers which lasted until Dickens's death in 1870. They
frequently travelled together on the Continent to France and Italy
and Wilkie became a frequent visitor to Dickens's homes at
Tavistock House and Gad's Hill where he was encouraged to fulfil
his theatrical ambitions. Collins wrote The Lighthouse in 1855 and
The Frozen Deep in 1856. Both were originally produced by Dickens
and his company

9. • 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

10. The Play
• The Woman in White was first performed as 'A
Drama in Three Acts' at the Surrey Theatre
(Blackfriars Road, Lambeth) - a short-lived
pirated production opening on 3 November 1860
with a revival at the Theatre Royal, Leicester, 26
August 1870. Collins's own version of the The
Woman in White, extensively rewritten from the
novel, ran with great success at the Olympic
Theatre from 9 October 1871 to 24 February
1872

11. The Real Woman in White….
• The sudden meeting in the novel of the hero,
Walter Hartright, with the mysterious woman in
white is said to have been inspired by a real life
meeting between Collins, strolling home one
evening in 1858, accompanied by his brother
Charles and the painter Millais. They were
accosted, so the story runs, by a woman
dressed in flowing white robes escaping from a
villa in Regent's Park where she had been kept
prisoner under mesmeric influence

12. Caroline Graves

13. Little was as it seemed…..
• Wilkie Collins probably met Caroline, as she was known, in the
spring of 1856 when he was temporarily living in lodgings in
Howland Street, Tottenham Court Road. Caroline and her widowed
mother-in-law, Mary Ann Graves, were living in the same area.
Nothing is known, for certain, of the exact circumstances of
Caroline's meeting with Collins, but by the end of 1858 they were
living together, first at 124 Albany Street, and from spring 1859 at 2a
New Cavendish Street. Although they never married, they
continued to live together, apart from one significant break, until
Collins died. Caroline was a beautiful woman who looked far
younger than her actual years and, though she had little or no
formal education, managed to transcend her humble beginnings and
pass herself off as a 'lady'. During the years when Collins was
writing his greatest novels, she undoubtedly contributed much to his
emotional security, as well as to his physical comfort.

14. • In October 1868, however, the household was suddenly
disrupted when Caroline Graves married Joseph Clow,
almost certainly in response to Collins's relationship with
Martha Rudd, and probably after Collins had himself
refused to marry Caroline. Her daughter and Collins's
doctor, Frank Beard, were the witnesses and Collins was
present at the the ceremony at Marylebone parish
church. The marriage was clearly a mistake, for by April
1871 Caroline was back at 90 Gloucester Place, and her
relationship with Wilkie was resumed in spite of his
continuing commitment to Martha Rudd and his three
children by her.
•

15. Continued in secret….
• Caroline Graves was known for form's sake as
Collins's 'housekeeper' and did not accompany
Wilkie on social occasions such as dinner
parties; it is also very unlikely that she was ever
introduced to Wilkie's mother. Caroline
entertained many of his friends who visited them
at home, travelled with him on the Continent,
went to the theatre with him and sometimes
wrote letters on his behalf when he was ill.
During Wilkie's last illness she nursed him
devotedly and when she died in 1895 was buried
in the same grave.

18. Yes, there is more….
Sensation Fiction
• Sensation fiction was a literary sub-
genre of Gothic literature, which was at
the height of its popularity in the 1860s
and 1870s.
• Sensation fiction uses many of the same
features of gothic fiction.

19. Features….
• sensation fiction is sometimes regarded as domesticated Gothic in that it
uses many of the devices of the Gothic novel, but places them in a
contemporary English setting
• they dispense with the supernatural element of Gothic fiction and even their
most extraordinary events are given a rational and natural explanation
• women (usually wives) suffer at the hands of men (usually husbands);
the heroes are young men who are sometimes helped by resourceful
women
• their plots concern issues of identity and inheritance
• insanity (real or supposed) plays a large partin the plot, with the private
lunatic asylum taking the place of the locked room or dungeon in a Gothic
novel, and the use of drugs taking the place of physical cruelty
• they often have complex narratives making use of first person statements,
diaries and letters, so that the stories are seen from more than one point of
view
• as with Gothic novels, sensation fiction aims to thrill and frighten the
reader

20. • Corpses, secrets, adultery, insanity, prostitution—all are
key elements of the sensation novels of the 1800s.
Called sensation novels because they are designed to
make the reader feel basic sensations—shock, disbelief,
horror, suspense, sexual excitement, and fear—these
novels offer unexpected twists and turns within a
framework of predictable conventions. These recurring
conventions include deathbed confessions, family
secrets, mistaken identity, inheritance, bigamy, and
female villains. This combination of the predictable and
the chaotic is representative of the clash between rigid
Victorian society and the changing societal and gender
roles that accompanied the emergence of industry and
capitalism in England and America. With their exciting
plot lines and easily readable format, sensation novels
explored unspoken fears and anxieties in a rapidly
changing world.

21. • In the mid- 1800s, women had few rights and were expected to be
subservient to men. Not only were women denied the vote, they were
denied the right to own property. Cultural expectations required that women
refrain from expressing themselves openly in the presence of men. Rather
they were expected to be pure, pleasant, and supportive of men at all times.
But, as reflected by the controversial sensation novels, these rigid roles
were changing. Feminist critics of the 1980s and 1990s are quick to point
out the unusual prevalence of strong female characters in sensation novels,
and the way their independent and often sexual behavior was harshly
criticized by contemporaries of the novels. Modern critics also point out the
way in which female sexuality was often used to denote strength,
rebelliousness, and evil. Appearing as nefarious seductresses, female
characters were often villains who were punished or made to see the error
of their ways at the story's end. Feminist critics also claim that while women
in earlier novels had been portrayed as victims waiting to be rescued, in
sensation novels the roles were often reversed and the male characters
were victimized

22. • With the urbanization that accompanied the industrial boom of the
mid-1800s, the big city also played a central role in many sensation
novels. Some critics assert that the city provides the setting where
men were tempted by villains and seduced by fallen women. These
critics also argue that the urban sensation novel celebrated
domesticity and the home as sources of renewal, faith, and morality.
Female characters were, more often than not, encouraged to remain
at the center of home life while men ventured out into the dangerous
city with all of its temptations. The city was also the setting wherein
shocking secrets about one or more of the characters were
revealed. These secrets commonly involved murder, bigamy, or
adultery and often came to light in a deathbed confession scene.
This motif arose directly out of the breakdown of rigid Victorian
social mores and attitudes toward social class—a breakdown
caused in part by the growth of capitalism and urbanization, which
offered a variety of new attitudes and opportunities for class
mobility.

23. • Sensation novels were closely tied to the
melodramatic theater of the same period. In fact,
such writers as Charles Reade and Wilkie
Collins wrote drama as well as novels and many
of the most well-known sensation novels were
written for or adapted to the stage. While
conventional dramas were often set in distant
castles or far-away lands, sensation theater was
set in the present day and location, giving it a
proximity and reality that was new to theater-
goers.

24. • This sense of reality and proximity was also heightened in the
sensation novel by its origins in journalism. Many scholars claim that
sensation novels grew out of newspaper stories involving murder,
assault, and other crimes that people found especially shocking in
Victorian times. Often, these stories revealed the involvement of
upstanding, even well-known, citizens in dangerous or immoral
behavior. In a culture that valued appearances, revelations of crime
among the upper class disrupted idyllic Victorian ideas about
society. Failure to be shocked by these events was considered in
bad taste—and to write about them was even worse. But the
relationship between the new style of fiction writing and the new
style of journalism went both ways. Because many of the sensation
novelists claimed to get their material straight from the newspaper,
they felt justified in writing about it.

25. • Meanwhile, newspaper stories suggested that, like the
characters in sensation novels, anyone's nextdoor
neighbor could turn out to be a murderer or an adulterer,
or to have some other scandalous secret. Reading about
crimes in the newspaper brought fictional crimes closer
to home, made the improbable events of sensation
novels seem more real, and made everyday life a little
more exciting—all of which helped to make sensation
novels immensely popular. Marketed cheaply, sensation
novels sold very well at train stations, small stores,
kiosks, and newspaper stands and were widely
discussed in magazines and newspapers and among
ordinary citizens.