Wilkie Collins

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Dramatisations and readings of his sensational stories including The Woman in White & The Moonstone

The Wilkie Collins BBC Radio Collection

Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Level 7: The Woman in White (ELT Graded Reader)

Four BBC Radio 4 crime dramatisations

The Lady Detectives

The Woman in White

The Moonstone

The Haunted Hotel

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

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A Mystery of Modern Venice

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The Law and the Lady

Armadale

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

The Woman In White

Magdalen, a woman who resists the Victorian idea of the angel in the house and proves to be unscrupulous in her fight for survival against poverty and prejudice, employing disguise and deceit to win back what she believes is rightfully hers

Dizzyingly readable, with a feminist anti-heroine up to all sorts of deception and skulduggery, cheered along by the reader every step of the way

Two dispossessed sisters fight for their inheritance, the narrative snaking compellingly around Victorian Britain

Collins explores the iniquity of Victorian morality by damning the future of his resourceful heroine at an early stage with the discovery of her own illegitimacy. Deprived of her inheritance and even her name, Magdalen Vanstone sets out with frightening courage to reestablish her fortune and reputation. The ingenuity and guile she employs to achieve her end makes her a rare figure in Victorian literature and one of Collins' most subversive characters

'A masterpiece' The Times 
 
After the tragic deaths of their parents, Magdalen and Norah discover the devastating news that they are both illegitimate and not entitled to any inheritance. Norah is forced to become a governess to earn her keep but Magdalen has grander plans and embarks on an elaborate scheme of revenge against her cold-hearted relatives. 
 
INCLUDES 'MRS ZANT AND THE GHOST'

'A very good thriller...I enjoyed it immensely' William Trevor, Guardian

Wilkie Collins was born in London on 8 January 1824. His father was the landscape painter William Collins. After school he worked for a tea merchant before studying to become a lawyer. In 1848 he published a biography of his father and his first novel, Antonina, followed in 1850. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens who would later edit and publish some of his novels. Collins's novels were extremely popular in his own time as well as now. The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868) are his best known works. Collins was linked with two women (one of whom bore him three children) but he never married. He died on 23 September 1889.

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Wilkie Collins

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