Wilkie Collins and the Detective Novel

8th January marks the 200^th anniversary of the birth of British author and playwright Wilkie Collins. Collins is hailed as a pioneer of suspense fiction and the detective novel.

The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), stand out as Collins’s most famous works. The Moonstone has earned the distinction of being described as the first modern British detective novel.

A few facts

• William Wilkie Collins was the son of a landscape painter, William Collins, and his first published work was a memoir of his father.
• Collins developed a talent for fiction while at school. His earlier works featured tales of seduction and vengeance and were classed as “sensational novels”—the precursor of the suspense genre. His later works also feature social commentary, particularly regarding family law.
• He had a close working relationship with Charles Dickens, and they influenced each other’s writing. Through Dickens, Collins developed his talents in characterisation and humour, while Dickens benefitted from more suspenseful plot structures.
• Today, we might class Collins as a polyamorist. He spent most of his life in a relationship with a widow called Caroline Graves. He also had a long-term relationship with a woman called Martha Rudd, and they had two children. For the last twenty years of his life, he divided his time between Caroline and Martha but never married either of them.

The Moonstone

The Woman in White is regarded as his most successful novel, but I haven’t read it. Apparently, in 2003, it featured in the “Top 100 Greatest Novels of All Time”. I’m not a massive fan of suspense or the detective novel. I haven’t read many, but I wish to continue to step outside my familiar reading material.

To prepare for this post, I started The Moonstone, but I haven’t finished it yet. I must be honest and say I first found Collins’s style to be long-winded and meandering. Let’s remember, we’re dealing with a Victorian fiction writer. Victorians love verbose prose and it’s not uncommon for an entire paragraph to be constructed from a single sentence. A modern editor would run out of red ink. Even a character admits he’s including information that may not be essential to the story—but is it?

“The first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels…”

T.S. Eliott’s opinion of The Moonstone.

The original title page lists this as a romance. While there is a romantic subplot, it is not the focus of the novel. The story is told through the recollections of several main characters regarding the theft of a yellow diamond that was originally stolen from a Hindu temple in India. The novel’s structure is complex, and it took a while for me to shape the narrative in my head.

Once I got used to the style and voice, I’ll be honest, Collins’s skills in characterisation and humour are clear. Each narrator has their little quirks, which inform their interpretations and suspicions, but who is correct? I guess I’ll have to read on to find out.

Are you a fan of Wilkie Collins? Which is your favourite work? Let me know in the comments.