“There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments…All I could discern distinctly by the moonlight, was a colourless, youthful face, meager and sharp to look at, about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully-attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue.”—English novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), The Woman in White (1860)
Read over that quote again. In its pathos and, especially, rising dramatic tension, it’s not hard to think that it comes from one of Charles Dickens’ later novels.
In some ways, in fact, we can think of Wilkie Collins—Dickens’ junior by 12 years—as the writer who, on the written page as well as in private life, pushed to a logical conclusion everything his longtime great friend and mentor did in these years.
The Woman in White, though not Collins’ first novel, was his first major success. The thriller began U.S. serialization in Harper’s Weekly on this date in 1859, one day before it was set to do so in the author’s native Britain, in the Dickens-edited magazine All the Year Round.
(What an extraordinary amount of thrilling literature that readers received in that single issue of the latter: not only the first installment of Collins’ book, but the last of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.)
What did I mean about Collins pushing “to a logical conclusion” everything Dickens did? Well, consider some of the ways that The Woman in White resembled, then diverged from, Dickens’ Bleak House (1853):
* Bleak House split between an omniscient, third-person narrator and a first-person one; Woman in White features five first-person narrators.
* Bleak House concerns itself with the maddening vagaries of the law; Woman was written by someone who broke off legal training after his father’s death allowed him to pursue what he really loved--writing. The latter book’s narrators were meant, in effect, to sound like witnesses at a trial.
* Bleak House, with its Inspector Bucket, might be thought of as the first detective novel; Woman might be considered the first novel narrated (at least in part) by an individual who functions as the “detective” of the plot by unlocking a mystery. Collins is generally regarded as the master of the Victorian “sensation novel”—a genre in which the commonplace facts of life collide with subject matter bound to shock the mores of the time: substance abuse, sexual transgressions, and insanity. That genre also further developed the beginnings of the modern detective story pioneered by Edgar Allan Poe.
* Bleak House spawned three adaptations for the BBC; Woman was spun off as a stage play in the 1870s (written by Collins himself), twice for the “Beeb,” then turned into a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I should also point out a few other ways in which the lives and/or works of Dickens and Collins reflected, in sometimes odd ways, on each other:
* Bleak House and Woman deal with secrets; their authors had their own, of a sexual nature. Dickens left his wife of two decades for Ellen Ternan, a young actress he met while taking part in Collins’ The Frozen Deep; for years, Collins maintained two separate households with two different women—a set of irregular relationships that increasingly alienated him from Dickens.
* Dickens’ daughter Katie married Collins’ sickly brother Charlie.
* By the end of the 1860s, Collins had become addicted to laudanum, and his novel The Moonstone would explore opium and laudanum addiction; addiction to opium would also prove a key plot element of Dickens’ unfinished 1870 novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which Collins, it was discovered years later, privately criticized as a product of an exhausted man).
I started The Woman in White a few weeks ago before being forced to put it down because of other projects. I’ve begrudged every minute I’ve spent away from the book since.
The first thing a modern reader notices about it is that it’s long—more than 600 pages in the edition I own. The quote above hints at why it bulks up so much, but also why it’s been adapted so much to the stage, screen and television—much like Dickens, Collins’ frequent collaborator in theatrical ventures.
Can you imagine what an editor like Gordon Lish—who made the minimalist Raymond Carver howl over his excisions—would do with this passage? Forget about three adjectival phrases to a noun, as Collins resorts to here, or two, or even one such phrase—poor Collins would be reduced to nouns and verbs!
But the effect of all of this verbiage is unforgettable—cinematic, really, in a way that the setting—a moonlit Hampstead heath—by itself couldn’t totally convey. Long after you’ll close the book, you’ll not soon put out of your mind, if ever, the image of the solitary, sad title character.
Read over that quote again. In its pathos and, especially, rising dramatic tension, it’s not hard to think that it comes from one of Charles Dickens’ later novels.
In some ways, in fact, we can think of Wilkie Collins—Dickens’ junior by 12 years—as the writer who, on the written page as well as in private life, pushed to a logical conclusion everything his longtime great friend and mentor did in these years.
The Woman in White, though not Collins’ first novel, was his first major success. The thriller began U.S. serialization in Harper’s Weekly on this date in 1859, one day before it was set to do so in the author’s native Britain, in the Dickens-edited magazine All the Year Round.
(What an extraordinary amount of thrilling literature that readers received in that single issue of the latter: not only the first installment of Collins’ book, but the last of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.)
What did I mean about Collins pushing “to a logical conclusion” everything Dickens did? Well, consider some of the ways that The Woman in White resembled, then diverged from, Dickens’ Bleak House (1853):
* Bleak House split between an omniscient, third-person narrator and a first-person one; Woman in White features five first-person narrators.
* Bleak House concerns itself with the maddening vagaries of the law; Woman was written by someone who broke off legal training after his father’s death allowed him to pursue what he really loved--writing. The latter book’s narrators were meant, in effect, to sound like witnesses at a trial.
* Bleak House, with its Inspector Bucket, might be thought of as the first detective novel; Woman might be considered the first novel narrated (at least in part) by an individual who functions as the “detective” of the plot by unlocking a mystery. Collins is generally regarded as the master of the Victorian “sensation novel”—a genre in which the commonplace facts of life collide with subject matter bound to shock the mores of the time: substance abuse, sexual transgressions, and insanity. That genre also further developed the beginnings of the modern detective story pioneered by Edgar Allan Poe.
* Bleak House spawned three adaptations for the BBC; Woman was spun off as a stage play in the 1870s (written by Collins himself), twice for the “Beeb,” then turned into a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I should also point out a few other ways in which the lives and/or works of Dickens and Collins reflected, in sometimes odd ways, on each other:
* Bleak House and Woman deal with secrets; their authors had their own, of a sexual nature. Dickens left his wife of two decades for Ellen Ternan, a young actress he met while taking part in Collins’ The Frozen Deep; for years, Collins maintained two separate households with two different women—a set of irregular relationships that increasingly alienated him from Dickens.
* Dickens’ daughter Katie married Collins’ sickly brother Charlie.
* By the end of the 1860s, Collins had become addicted to laudanum, and his novel The Moonstone would explore opium and laudanum addiction; addiction to opium would also prove a key plot element of Dickens’ unfinished 1870 novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which Collins, it was discovered years later, privately criticized as a product of an exhausted man).
I started The Woman in White a few weeks ago before being forced to put it down because of other projects. I’ve begrudged every minute I’ve spent away from the book since.
The first thing a modern reader notices about it is that it’s long—more than 600 pages in the edition I own. The quote above hints at why it bulks up so much, but also why it’s been adapted so much to the stage, screen and television—much like Dickens, Collins’ frequent collaborator in theatrical ventures.
Can you imagine what an editor like Gordon Lish—who made the minimalist Raymond Carver howl over his excisions—would do with this passage? Forget about three adjectival phrases to a noun, as Collins resorts to here, or two, or even one such phrase—poor Collins would be reduced to nouns and verbs!
But the effect of all of this verbiage is unforgettable—cinematic, really, in a way that the setting—a moonlit Hampstead heath—by itself couldn’t totally convey. Long after you’ll close the book, you’ll not soon put out of your mind, if ever, the image of the solitary, sad title character.
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