PS-Surveying English Literatures: Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White and More
Jan-Peer Hartmann
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2024 marks the bicentenary of Wilkie Collins’ birth. A close friend of Charles Dickens, with whom he collaborated on a number literary projects and amateur theatricals, shockingly liberal in most of his views (including religion, gender roles and matrimony), a confirmed laudanum addict and lover of spicy food and – though unbeknownst to most of his contemporaries – romantically involved with two women, to neither of whom he was married (though he had children with one and lived together with the other) – Wilkie Collins nevertheless became one of the most popular authors in the 1860s with a string of novels that quickly acquired the label ‘sensation novels’. Dealing with the darker sides of bourgeois society – fraud, murder, drug-addiction and adultery, to name but a few – and showcasing memorable and often altogether unconventional characters in different stages of intense emotional stress, his novels both shocked and delighted readers from Thomas Carlyle to Prince Albert. Fans included Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, and some critics have seen Wilkie Collins as one of the most important precursors of detective fiction.
In this class, we will read two of Wilkie Collins’ best-known and successful novels, The Woman in White and The Moonstone, as well as a third, somewhat lesser-known work, The Law and the Lady, which boasts one of the earliest – perhaps the earliest – female (amateur) detective in English fiction.
Students are expected to have read all texts (some 1,500 pages!) before the respective sessions (dates will be provided in a syllabus), to participate in the discussions, and to write a term paper. Please make sure to enroll in the Blackboard class. We will start discussing The Woman in White in the third session.
Ideally, you should use the following editions: Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White [1860], ed. Matthew Sweet (London: Penguin, 2004). [ISBN: 978-0141439617]; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone [1868], ed. Sandra Kemp (London: Penguin, 1998). [ISBN: 978-0-14-043408-8]; Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady [1875], ed. David Skilton (London: Penguin, 2004). [ISBN: 978-0-14-043607-5].
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16 Class schedule
Regular appointments