Wilkie Collins Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Charles Dickens Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Elizabeth Gaskell Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Anthologies

Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins was born in London, England on January 8, 1824 the son of a respected landscape painter, and was named after David Wilkie, his painter godfather. His family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but took him to Italy and France with them between 1836 and 1838.

Coming back to England, he went to Cole’s boarding school, and finished his education in the year 1841, and after he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand.

His first short story, called “The Last Stage Coachman”, was published in Illuminated Magazine in August of 1843.

In the year 1846, he became a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851 however he would never practice law. In 1848, one year after his dad died, that he published “The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R. A.” to good reviews.

By this time, he had turned to writing a number of short fiction pieces that appeared in Charles Dickens’ periodicals, Household Words and later, All the Year Round. His first novel, called “Iolani”, which was set in ancient Tahiti and involving sacrifice and sorcery, though possibly written as early on as 1844, was later rejected by publishers. It was only rediscovered and published for the very first time in the year 1999.

Developing at once the novel of sensation and detective fiction, his exotic and gripping tales, which often included sinister locales, strong heroines, charlatans, and psychological or physical afflictions, quickly became popular with readers. His first foray into crime fiction was “Basil”, which is a Gothic story of bigamy, doppelgangers, and some hidden family secrets.

Wilkie was a close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March of 1851 until Dickens died in June of 1870. Wilkie was one of the best loved, best known, and, for a period, best paid of the Victorian fiction writer. However after he died, his reputation started declining while Dickens’ bloomed.

Wilkie’s creative high point was the 1860s, and was during this time that he achieved critical acclaim and fame, with four of his novels: “The Woman in White”, “Armadale”, “No Name”, and “The Moonstone”.

He’s being given more popular and critical attention than he’s ever gotten, with most of his work in print, and are all in e-text. He gets studied widely, with new television, film, and radio versions of a few of his books being made, and all of his letters have been published.

Movies made of his work includes: “The Moonstone”, “The Twin Pawns”, “Crimes at the Dark House”, “The Woman in White”, “She Loves and Lies”, and “Tangled Lives”.

Wilkie, who was unafraid to question Victorian social mores, never married however did keep two families. He lived both with Caroline Graves, whom he met in a midnight encounter like the one described in “The Woman in White”, as well as with Martha Rudd.

Later in life, he became addicted to opium, starting in 1870 until he died his novels became concerned with social issues, and are thought inferior to his earlier work.

He died on September 23, 1889 at the age of sixty-five.

“The Woman in White” is a stand alone novel that was released in the year 1859. This novel famously opens up with Walter Hartright’s spooky encounter on a moonlit road in London. Engaged as a drawing master to Laura Fairlie, he becomes caught up in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco, his ‘charming’ friend and who has a taste for poison, vanilla bonbons, and white mice.

Hunting down questions of insanity and identity along the corridors and paths of English country houses and a madhouse, this is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre which combined psychological realism with Gothic horror.

This is a novel that is well drawn with characters to despise and characters to root for, a twisting plot which rolls up seamlessly, and was narrated seamlessly by multiple perspectives.

“No Name” is a stand alone novel that was released in the year 1862. Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s kids.

Magdalen Vanstone along with her sister Norah, learn the real meaning of social stigma in Victorian England right after the traumatic discovery that their dearly loved parents, whose sudden deaths left them orphans, weren’t married when they were born. They are brutally ousted from Combe-Raven (the country estate that has been their home since childhood) and disinherited by law. These two young women are just left to fend for themselves.

As Norah the submissive of the two, follows a path of hardship and duty as a governess, her rebellious and high-spirited little sister made other choices. Determined to regain her rightful inheritance by whatever means necessary, Magdalen uses her dramatic talent and unconventional beauty in recklessly chasing her revenge. Aided in this by an audacious swindler, named Captain Wragge, she braves a sequence of trials that leads up to one climactic trial. Can she actually trade herself in marriage to a man that she loathes?

“The Moonstone” is a stand alone novel that was released in the year 1868. Wilkie Collins’ captivating story of theft, romance, and murder inspired a majorly popular genre: the detective mystery.

Hinging on the theft of one enormous diamond that was originally stolen from some Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, a mysterious band of Indian jugglers, a hilarious house steward named Gabriel Betteridge, and a lovesick housemaid.

“The Law and the Lady” is a stand alone novel that was released in the year 1873. Three years prior, her husband stood accused of murdering somebody. And the verdict came in from the jury was the Scottish Verdict, Not Proven. The jury didn’t have enough to convict him, yet not quite enough to comfortably exonerate him either.

Eustace couldn’t bear the weight of her find, and he fled to the continent, to live in anonymity. However Valeria knew her husband, and she loved him. She knew that he was an innocent man, too, with the kind of intuition that guides the lucky flawlessly. And so she set out to prove it to the rest of the world.