"This volume in the Literary Lives series focuses on the career of the popular Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins (1824-89) and provides a new account of his professional life in the literary world of nineteenth-century Britain. It draws on recently available business and personal correspondence to establish a fresh portrait of one of Victorian Britain's busiest authors, taking in Collins's notoriously complicated private life and his friendship with Charles Dickens, as well as his work as journalist, reviewer, and playwright. New insights are given into the international dimensions of Collins's career. There is full discussion of Collins's best-known novels, including The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and Armadale, but attention is also given to lesser-known works and to Collins's plays, which have long been neglected."--Jacket.