Wilkie Collins. By Robert Ashley. (Arthur Barker. The English Novelists
Series. 7s. 6d.)
MR. ASHLEY has written a concise, sym- pathetic and well-balanced introduction to Wilkie Collins ; it is only unfortunate that his commendable little book should appear after Mr. Robinson's substantial biography. Mk. Robinson backed his narrative with new correspondence and with many com- ments and criticisms which had long been forgotten in magazines ; the only remaining major problem was to reveal that large part of Collins' private life which perhaps he himself had tried to keep obscure. After Forster's deliberate silence and the bonfire at Gad's Hill, this revelation may be impos- sible ; certainly Mr. Ashley has not made it. Within a brief space, however, he has given a thoughtful account of Collins' literary career from its unexpected begin- ning, the Memoirs of his father, to the final attempts at drama and unsuccessful social criticism. Collins tried his hand at classical romance, travel narrative and translation, and he achieved a brief but remarkable success as a dramatist. From such experi- ments he profited when, in middle age, he came to write his two most durable books ; and the development of his germinal ideas, the relationship of his works to one another and to subsequent tales of mystery and detection, have been well suggested. Mr. Ashley lets Collins emerge, an honest and likeable person, an obvious friend for Dickens, and one to whom Dickens owed much. Mr. Ashley's own literary judgement is the more respected because he does not
Previous page
