Hampstead Heath was still a wild iegion of mystery when
the Woman in White fluttered across its wastes and thrilled Hampstead Heath was still a wild iegion of mystery when the Woman in White fluttered across its wastes and thrilled
the Victorian Age. In Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others (Constable, 18s.) Mr. S. M. Ellis explores the gloomy and , lugubrious imaginings in which Victorians took refuge from a robust existence of cheerfulness and porterhouse steaks. Dismal sunsets, gloomy marshes less than fifty miles away from London, haunted rivers—such were the landscape " properties " used so skilfully by Wilkie Collins. The master of mysterious _plots and hypnotic suggestion could spend rollicking holidays with his friend Charles Dickens, but Le Fanu was more earnest in his grim task of frightening the public. The Irish novelist worked always at midnight, drank tea to excess, and became as eccentric as one of his own characters. Bohemianism of the 'sixties was as athletic as the Christianity of Kingsley. Vigorous and bluff, despite velvet coat and open collar, Mortimer Collins, the versatile poet, could be formidable in a squabble. He attacked Swin- bume, but his own novel, Sweet Anne Page, was suppressed because of certain love passages. The author of Mr. Verdant Green, and Mrs. Riddell and R. D. Blackmore, are among the " Others " described in this delightful book. Mr. Ellis ran- sacks the best-sellers of mid-Victorian times,, and his biblio- graphies are full of surprises.
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