- Published: 12 September 2013
- ISBN: 9781448136896
- Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation
- Published: 12 September 2013
- ISBN: 9781448136896
- Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
Acclaimed biographer Andrew Lycett uncovers a few skeletons in Wilkie Collins’s closet, revealing a private life every bit as sensational as anything the author dreamt up in his fiction.
Observer
Clean outlines, crystal clear English, and a clear-eyed picture of his subject... Andrew Lycett’s a terrific narrator... the Hemingway of biographers… One sees Collins more clearly having read Lycett… A fine, and pre-eminently useful, biography of the most elusive character in Victorian literature.
John Sutherland, The Spectator
Collins’s private life... was as rich in secrets as his books. Sensible, thoughtful and never less than scrupulous, Lycett is just the right biographer to assess whether such potentially sensational material should affect our interpretation of Collins’s work.
Sunday Times
As delicate as it is thorough, Lycett peels away the layers of deception with which Collins protected himself and shows us the engagingly vulnerable figure beneath
Evening Standard
Excellent on Collins's friendship with Dickens, which he presents, convincingly, as much more of a relationship of equals than Dickens's biographers allow
The Times
[An] admirable biography... The friendship between Dickens and Collins – both men with "skeletons in the closet" in terms of their domestic arrangements – is one of the highlights
Scotland on Sunday
Measured and informative... [with] some entertaining anecdotes along the way
Mail on Sunday
[A] generous and scrupulously researched biography. Lycett helpfully places Collins's mainstream interests – including private asylums and the marraige laws – in context, and gives proper attention to some of his more personal quirks, such as a suspicion of shaving and a strong dislike of the countryside.
Daily Telegraph
[A] splendid biography... Lycett brings to life quite brilliantly this extraordinary man.
Express
Andrew Lycett, a seasoned and thorough biographer... is completely at home in Wilkie's world and the topography of mid-Victorian London. He brings out the millieu in which Wilkie moved with practised ease [and] has sleuthed away into his subject's hidden life with an industry worthy of Collins himself.
Nigel Jones, History Today
Lycett paints a vivid picture of Collins . . . [his] lucid biography unpicks the contradictions at the heart of Wilkie Collins's character.
Observer
Fascinating … a well-researched and even-handed biography that shines a perceptive light on one of our great Victorian novelists
Daily Mail
This is a delicious literary romp through 19th century London, made all teh more entertaining by the fact that it's real life.
Sidmouth Herald
In his engrossing book, Andrew Lycett intimately connects the complex domestic life of the 19th-century English novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins with his writing career and celebrated contribution to sensational fiction ... By revisiting and revealing new sources, Lycett interweaves a fascinating family history, complex friendships, intriguing correspondences ... to take the reader on a sensational tour of Wilkie's unconventional life ... Lycett demonstrates a fascinating complexity to his relationship with women that invites further exploration ... highly readable and entertaining.
BBC History Magazine