Bøger af Wilkie Collins

ON a summer's morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship, bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay. They were both of the same age-eighteen. They had both, from childhood upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now parting for the first time-and parting, it might be, for life. The name of one was Blanche. The name of the other was Anne.

FOR reasons of my own, I excused myself from accompanying my stepmother to a dinner-party given in our neighborhood. In my present humor, I preferred being alone-and, as a means of getting through my idle time, I was quite content to be occupied in catching insects.

Wilkie Collins was an English writer best known for writing mystery novels. Collins was also a good friend of Charles Dickens and often collaborated with him on plays and short stories. Some of Collins' classics include The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name, but this was also one of his acclaimed works.

1.-The Trial. THE gentlemen of the jury retired to consider their verdict. Their foreman was a person doubly distinguished among his colleagues. He had the clearest head, and the readiest tongue. For once the right man was in the right place. Of the eleven jurymen, four showed their characters on the surface. They were: The hungry juryman, who wanted his dinner. The inattentive juryman, who drew pictures on his blotting paper. The nervous juryman, who suffered from fidgets. The silent juryman, who decided the verdict.

Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time By Wilkie Collins

Charles Dickens, who had wrote several previous plays, collaborated in 1867 with novelist Willkie Collins to create a Christmas play for the holiday theatrical season. The melodramatic plot of the play concerns two boys given the same name at the Founding Hospital which results in unfortunate consequences in adulthood. The play was produced with a memorable cast including the popular actors Charles Fechter and Benjamin Webster. Audiences received it with good support and the play had a lengthy run of over one hundred and fifty performances after which it was transferred to the Royal Standard Theatre. The following year, Dickens traveled to Paris to supervise a French version called "A'Abime" at the Vaudeville Theatre. An American production, an unauthorized pirated version, opened in 1868 at the Park Theatre, Brooklyn.

Colonel Herncastle, an unpleasant former soldier, brings the Moonstone back with him from India where he acquired it by theft and murder during the Siege of Seringapatam. Angry at his family, who shun him, he leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, thus exposing her to attack by the stone's hereditary guardians, who, legend says, will stop at nothing to retrieve it.Rachel wears the stone to her birthday party, but that night it disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand; and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly furious with Franklin Blake, with whom she has previously appeared to be enamoured, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned detective, the house party ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.

After Dark by Wilkie Collins. After Dark is a collection of six short stories by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1856. It was the author's first collection of short stories. Five of the stories were previously published in Household Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens. William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824

When John Clark and Domingo "Ding" Chavez are forcibly retired from both the CIA and Rainbow, they join Jack Ryan, Jr. at "The Campus", a privately run intelligence organization carrying 100 blank Presidential Pardons (signed by Jack Ryan, Sr. before he left office) for any actions they may choose to take based on the information they collect. John and Ding take the responsibility to train Jack Jr. for field work while they try to crack a plot by a group of Islamic extremists to assemble and initiate a nuclear device in a nuclear waste storage facility in order to poison the water table for the western United States. Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, Sr. decides that he's had enough of the way his successor, President Ed Kealty, is running the country, and subsequently announce his candidacy for President of the United States.

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale and No Name. Collins was a lifelong friend of Charles Dickens. A number of Collins's works were first published in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words. The two collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works, and some of Collins's plays were performed by Dickens's acting company. -wikipedia

Miss or Mrs.?, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Man and Wife is the ninth novel by Wilkie Collins, and was published in serial form in 1870. Like many of his other novels it has a complex plot and tackles social issues, in this case the then-lax state of the marriage laws, particularly in Scotland and Ireland. As always, Collins deals carefully but frankly with human personal behavior. To avoid offending Victorian morals too greatly, much is implied rather than stated outright. Nevertheless, even dealing with such matters at all led to his novels being derided as ¿sensation fiction¿ by his critics. By today¿s standards, of course, they wouldn¿t even raise an eyebrow.In Man and Wife, the main character Anne Silvester has fallen pregnant to a muscular and handsome, but boorish man, Geoffrey Delamayn, to whom she is not married. She is working as a governess at a house in Scotland. Anne arranges to meet Delamayn secretly at a garden party and angrily demands that he fulfill his promise to marry her, that very day. He very reluctantly agrees to a secret, private marriage, knowing that a public marriage would badly affect his inheritance prospects. How is the marriage to be arranged quickly but kept quiet? Anne has a plan based on her understanding of the looseness of the marriage laws in Scotland. Naturally, of course, things go badly wrong with this plan and many complexities arise.Collins is deeply critical of the state of contemporary marriage laws, both in how loosely they were framed, and in how little power over their own lives they gave to women once they were married, even if married to a brutal man. He also uses this novel to denounce the worship of sporting heroes and the obsession with physical prowess rather than mental superiority as a primary indication of male virtue.Though not as popular as his novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Man and Wife received a good critical reception when it was released and was a commercial success.

The Dead Secret is Wilkie Collins¿ fourth novel. It first appeared in serial form in Charles Dickens¿ Household Words magazine during 1856. Like many of Collins¿ books, it features incidents and themes which were considered to be sensational at the time; in this case, sex before marriage, illegitimacy, and fraud.The novel opens with a scene at Porthgenna Tower, a mansion in Cornwall, where the lady of the house, Mrs. Treverton, is dying. On her deathbed, she tries to force her maidservant, Sarah Leeson, to swear that she will give a letter Mrs. Treverton has written to her husband, Captain Treverton, once she is dead. The letter reveals an important family secret in which Sarah is deeply involved and which she consequently is desperately unwilling to pass on. Mrs. Treverton succeeds in making Sarah swear not to destroy the letter or remove it from the house, but dies before making the young woman swear to give the letter to the Captain. Sarah therefore finds a place to conceal it within the house.The rest of the novel deals with Rosamond, the Treverton¿s daughter, who grows to adulthood and marries Leonard Franklin, a young man of a well-to-do family, who is afflicted with blindness. Franklin purchases Porthgenna Tower after the Captain¿s death, and the couple plan to move into the property and renovate it. Doing so, however, means that they are likely to uncover the hidden letter concealing the family secret.While critics don¿t consider The Dead Secret to be one of Collins¿ best novels, it contains some of the same elements of mystery and suspense as The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and much of his characteristic wry humor.

The ¿Moonstone¿ of the title is a large but flawed diamond, looted from India at the time of the Mutiny by an unscrupulous British officer. Many years later, estranged from his family due to his licentious lifestyle, the officer bequeaths the diamond to his sister¿s daughter, Rachel Verrinder, to be given to her on her 18th birthday. Due to the ill-omens surrounding the gem, this may have been an act of revenge rather than reconciliation. The diamond, it appears, was taken from a statue of the Moon God worshipped by a Hindu cult, and it has long been sought by a group of Brahmins determined to return it to their temple.On the night of the birthday party the gem mysteriously disappears from Rachel¿s room. While the first suspicions naturally fall on these Indians, they are eventually exculpated. Rachel becomes hysterical and angry when questioned about the theft and refuses to assist the police. Active efforts to assist them are taken up by Rachel¿s cousin (and sweetheart) Franklin Blake. These efforts simply drive Rachel into further fury, and she becomes completely estranged from him. Suspicion thus falls on her as having some secret reason for wishing to raise money on the diamond. The novel proceeds to slowly uncover the mysteries involved.Published in 1868, The Moonstone is often considered as one of the precursors of the modern detective novel, though this is a label which would not have been used by its author Wilkie Collins and his contemporaries. While it is true that the plot revolves around the mystery of a theft, and that it features Sergeant Cuff ¿in the Detective Force of Scotland Yard,¿ the novel is much more about character and relationships than the mere revelation of secrets. It also has a good dose of Collins¿ humour, as the story is told in large part by eccentric characters such as the old house-steward Gabriel Betteredge who regards Robinson Crusoe as an oracle; and the ultra-religious Miss Clack, determined to convert everyone to her views.Immensely popular at the time of its publication in serial form, The Moonstone is rightly considered to be one of Collins¿ best works, and remains highly regarded today.

The Woman in White tells the story of Walter Hartright, a young and impoverished drawing teacher who falls in love with his aristocratic pupil, Laura Fairlie. He cannot hope to marry her, however, and she is married off against her will to a baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, who is seeking her fortune. The terms of her marriage settlement prevent Glyde accessing her money while she lives, so together with his deceptively charming and cunning friend, Count Fosco, they hatch an unscrupulous deception to do so nonetheless. In an early 19th Century version of ¿identity theft,¿ they contrive to fake Lauräs death and confine her to a mental asylum. Their plot is eventually uncovered and exposed by Hartright with the help of Lauräs resourceful half-sister, Marian Halcombe.The Woman in White was the most popular of Wilkie Collins¿ novels in the genre then known as ¿sensation fiction.¿ It has never been out of print and is frequently included in lists of the best novels of all time. Published initially in serial form in 1859¿60, it achieved an early and remarkable following, probably because of the strength of its characters, in particular the smooth and charming but utterly wicked villain Count Fosco, and the intelligent and steadfast Marian Halcombe opposed to him.

No Name is set in England during the 1840s. It follows the fortunes of two sisters, Magdalen Vanstone and her older sister Norah. Their comfortable upper-middle-class lives are shockingly disrupted when, after the sudden deaths of their parents, they discover that they are disinherited and left without either name or fortune. The headstrong Magdalen vows to recover their inheritance, by fair means or foul. Her increasing desperation makes her vulnerable to a wily confidence trickster, Captain Wragge, who promises to assist her in return for a cut of the profits.No Name was published in serial form like many of Wilkie Collins¿ other works. They were tremendously popular in their time, with long queues forming awaiting the publication of each episode. Though not as well known as his The Woman in White and The Moonstone, No Name is their equal in boasting a gripping plot and strong women characters (a rarity in the Victorian era). Collins¿ mentor Charles Dickens is on record as considering it to be far the superior of The Woman in White.

L'abîme by Wilkie Collins a été considéré comme un travail important tout au long de l'histoire humaine, et afin de garantir que ce travail ne soit jamais perdu, nous avons pris des mesures pour assurer sa préservation en republiant ce livre dans un format contemporain pour les générations actuelles et futures. Ce livre entier a été retapé, remanié et reformaté. Étant donné que ces livres ne sont pas fabriqués à partir de copies numérisées, le texte est lisible et clair.