Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women - and avidly read by generations of readers.
Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, 'the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists', from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone - often called the first true detective novel - and the sensational The Woman in White, he produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works.
Told with Ackroyd's inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humour and sympathetic understanding.
| ISBN: | 9780099287476 |
| Publication date: | 7th March 2013 |
| Author: | Peter Ackroyd |
| Publisher: | Vintage an imprint of Random House |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 224 pages |
| Genres: |
Biography: writers |
Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women - and avidly read by generations of readers.
Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, 'the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists', from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone - often called the first true detective novel - and the sensational The Woman in White, he produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works.
Told with Ackroyd's inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humour and sympathetic understanding.
Wilkie Collins features in the following genres: Biography: writers
Wilkie Collins is available in Ebook, Paperback, Hardback
Wilkie Collins was written by Peter Ackroyd and published by Vintage an imprint of Random House
Wilkie Collins has 224 pages
£15.29