WILKIE COLLINS

William Wilkie Collins

(1824 - 1889)

William Collins was born and raised in the fashionable London district of Marylebourne. Wilkie, as he was affectionately known, then spent the remainder of his life within the same few blocks. Curiously, the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes also was located in the district at 221B Baker Street.

By any standard, Collins led an unconventional life. Early on he became a story-teller. At boarding school, the short, stout boy with the disproportionately large head and shoulders with a lump on his forehead, and with small hands and feet, began spinning tales to appease a bully. His ungainly physical attributes, however, seemed no burden to Collins. He seems to have used himself for the model of Count Fosco, one of the principle characters in The Woman In White.

Initially a journalist, at 24 he entered law school and passed the bar in 1851; but he never practiced. He had begun writing fiction in 1843 and his first story appeared in a popular illustrated magazine. His first novel, inspired by the death of his father, was The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A. The book was published in 1848, receiving good reviews. Wilkie never looked back.

Writing afforded him the financial wherewithal and the freedom to cultivate his bohemian preferences. He remained a lifetime bachelor, though he did live with several women. He indulged in good food, good drink, often to excess. Wilkie wore flamboyant clothes, frequently traveled to France and Italy, was widely read, and maintained a vigorous sense of humor. Despite his apparent joie de vivre, his health was often poor. To relieve the symptoms of his many ailments, he took larger and larger doses of laudanum, a tincture of opium, which was a common medication of the 19th century.

His wide circle of friends included Charles Dickens; and for many years Collins provided material for Dickens' magazines. The Woman In White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone were his best known works. During his lifetime he wrote over thirty major books, hundreds of articles, short stories and essays, and a dozen plays. He was noted for his cynical regard for the Victorian establishment, and for championing the many victims of the prevalent social injustices.

As we shall see, that cynical regard for establishment would become a major theme in all subsequent detective fiction.

THE PREEMINENT AUTHORS OF DETECTIVE FICTION

What follows is a discussion of the six most influential authors of detective stories. In subsequent posts, brief biographies of those writers will make their appearance.

Top Ten

Top ten lists are ubiquitous. Any subject one cares to name probably has its list. Groups of ten are numerically satisfying. The metric system is a case in point. Such lists are brief, but still manage to capture the essence of the subject. Top ten novelists, top ten baseball players, top ten dogs, top ten automobiles: peruse the lists and one is immediately immersed in the subject. Which is not to mention the initial letter alliteration.

As my current project involves the equally ubiquitous detective novel, I thought it appropriate to list the most influential writers of this genre, and provide a brief biography of each. My list is not a top ten, nor a 'best' compilation. The list is comprised simply of six individuals who became benchmarks for all writers in this genre. The six will be listed in chronological order.

Wilkie Collins must certainly begin any such scheme. Two of his novels---The Woman In White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868) --- are still read and rank among the best written. Arthur Conan Doyle (A Study In Scarlet, 1886) next in line, is arguably the most influential of the group with his creation, Mr Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair At Styles, 1920) the most prolific of the group, has sold millions of books and her man, Hercule Poirot, is almost as well known as Holmes. Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, 1930) and Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, 1939) come up next. These two created what amounts to a sub-genre of detective fiction. No more Mr Nice Guy. With Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, the hard boiled detective takes center stage, and would set the tone for the next fifty years. Last on the list is Rex Stout (Fer-de-Lance, 1934). Stout, like Christie, was a word machine. He created Nero Wolfe in the 1930s; and took the concept of the locked room, a common motif throughout detective fiction, and turned it on its ear. Wolfe solves all his cases from the custom built chair in his office in the New York city brownstone where he resides.

Others beside these six might well have made the list. My time frame, however, is roughly 1850 to 1950. Many more minor --- they would not appreciate the label, I am sure --- writers have penned stories during this time frame: Philo Vance, Mickey Spillane and Charlie Chan's creator Earl Derr Biggers, and Ellery Queen to name butfour. But if 'influential' is the governing descriptor, I will stick with my 'big six.'

NOVELS AND OTHER NONSENSE

The novel is a literary genre whose history is 1000 years old; and this history is not without its controversy. Lady Murasaki, a well placed court figure in a Japanese emperor's retinue, is said to have written the first 'novel'. The Tale of Genji, is a long narrative with some development of character, plot, and place. Whether this story is the first novel or not is in dispute. Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote, a work from the 16th century is another early example of the form.

 

From the Encyclopedia Britannic comes this definition: A novel is an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.¹

The novel is just one of several forms that literature might take: poetry, drama, short prose, and non-fiction are other common genres. In the Greek classic tradition there were but two types: tragedy and comedy. Our penchant for division is inexorable. These days we further split the categories into subcategories and, no doubt, there are categories of the subcategories. Splitting hairs seems to be what our feeble intellects prefer. While this discrimination can be useful in understanding the nature of the beast we are dealing with, such labeling can also be detrimental when it comes to a clear view of the work. Clarity is often obscured by sentiment.

Meet an old man with a young wife and what do you have? Cradle-robber. Gold digger.

from The New Yorker

Samuel Beckett, Paris, April, 1979. Photograph by

Richard Avedon. © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Someone who picks up a novel by Samuel Beckett inevitably comes to the reading with preconceived notions. Disappointment follows. This will be especially so with his early 'novels.' Tedious, boring, repetitious are three of the kinder epithets often applied to Dream Of Fair to Middling Women (1932), his first novel, as well as to Murphy (1936). The reason for this criticism may be quite simple: Beckett's intention was never to write a conventional novel. He was convinced that Joyce had worked the form for all that it was worth. He wrote:

"I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding."²

His prose smacked more of drama than not. Reading Beckett's 'novels' with this in mind produces a different outcome.

Are they then anti-novels? Literature noir? Prose-drama? None of the above? Ultimately, these are just more labels. The key point here is this: Avoid conceptions, labeling, discrimination. Yes, you must stop on the red and go on the green. But ... And whether the discussion is about Samuel Beckett or The Muppets, best to remember that inevitably an object labeled 'cigar' is always just an object labeled 'cigar.' Anything else is just smoke and mirrors.

1 https://www.britannica.com/art/novel

2  Samuel Beckett, as related by James Knowlson in his biography.