Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation

The definitive biography of Wilkie Collins: the Victorian novelist, playwright, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, who lived a life of sensation.

Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, was the master of the Victorian sensation novel, but he also had a complex private life that could have come straight out of one of his bestselling novels. While his books focused on uncovering family secrets, Wilkie was determined to keep his own unconventional domestic arrangements – living with two women, neither of them his wife – hidden from the outside world.

In this colourful investigative biography, set against the backdrop of Victorian London, Andrew Lycett brings to life one of England’s greatest writers and reveals a brilliant, contrary and sensual man, deeply committed to his work.