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Wilkie Collins. Una intriga relacionada con una propiedad rural inglesa que hasta la reforma de Enrique VIII había pertenecido a la Iglesia Católica. Un prominente jesuita intenta convertir a la fe romana a su propietario, para luego convencerle de que renuncie a su heredad en favor de quienes siglos atras fueron despojados de ella por arbitrariedad real.

wilkie collins - Los destinos a los que hace referencia el título de esta novela son los de Mary Dermody y George Germaine, dos almas gemelas que, a lo largo de su vida, tratarán de permanecer unidos.

Wilkie Collins. La novela gira en torno a un misterioso lugar, un decadente palacio veneciano transformado en hotel. En este misterioso edificio convergen las vidas de los diferentes personajes que protagonizan la novela y en el interior de sus paredes seremos testigos de alucinaciones y pesadillas fantasmales que reflejan los rincones mas oscuros del alma humana.

Cien años antes de que Alfred Hitchcock mereciera en el cine el título de "maestro del suspense", William Wilkie Collins lo ostentó en la literatura, con obras ya clásicas como "La piedra lunar"y "La dama de blanco", precursoras de la novela policíaca y de intriga. Pero el escritor londinense también dejó constancia de su genio en el relato corto, del que son buen ejemplo estas cinco piezas maestras. "Una cama sumamente extraña", que figura entre sus mejores cuentos, narra la aterradora aventura de un estudiante británico en París, víctima de una original y demoníaca conspiración criminal. "El caldero de aceite" nos lleva a una pequeña aldea de Francia, descorriendo el velo de la idílica cotidianidad para mostrarnos su reverso oscuro y brutal. Parodia del folletín decimonónico, "La cuna fatídica" incide en el conflicto clásico de los niños intercambiados en la cuna para construir un delicioso e hilarante cuadro de costumbres. Finalmente, "El capitán y la ninfa" y "¡Vuela con el bergantín!" son relatos aventureros, de sesgo romántico el primero y de suspense, una vez más, el segundo.

En "Armadale", su obra más larga y una de sus obras magistrales, el maestro Wilkie Collins teje una trama envolvente y seductora que brega entre identidades confusas, maldiciones heredadas, rivalidades amorosas, espionaje y asesinatos.Cuando el anciano Allan Armadale escribe su terrible confesion en el lecho de muerte, no puede ni imaginarse las repercusiones que tendra esa carta cuando su hijo recien nacido la lea años despues. Por segunda vez, dos hombres con el mismo nombre y el mismo apellido se veran implicados en la prosecucion de una herencia que parece maldita. Mientras tanto, se suceden las sigilosas intrigas de Lydia Gwilt, un personaje misterioso y perverso que horrorizo a los lectores victorianos y que todavia hoy sobrecoge. Una mujer que llego a ser definida por la critica como una de las villanas mas curtidas.

"After Dark" is Wilkie Collinss first collection of six short stories, published in 1856. The book is a series of tales supposed to be told to poor travelling portrait-painter, William Kerby.William Kerby is in danger of losing his sight, which would hit him especially hard as he is a painter. Only rest can preserve it, but a man must eat, and so he and his wife Leah look for other ways to generate a small income. Having travelled a good deal and having heard all kinds of stories on those journeys, William dictates six short stories to his wife, hoping that publishing a book might tide them over.

"The Woman in White", masterpiece written by Wilkie Collins and published in 1860, is one of the earliest and most-beloved mystery novels.The public loved the mystery and intrigue behind the identity of the mysterious Woman in White and anxiously waited to read the continuation of the story each week as a new chapter showed up in the weekly publication All the Year Round. The story still intrigues people; it was turned into a PBS Mystery! presentation and an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in the last 15 years."The Woman in White" is a dramatic tale, inspired by an actual criminal case, is told through multiple narrators. Frederick Fairlie, a wealthy hypochondriac, hires virtuous Walter Hartright to tutor his beautiful niece and heiress, Laura, and her homely, courageous half sister, Marian Halcombe. Although Hartright and Laura fall in love, she honours her late fathers wish that she marry Sir Percival Glyde, a villain who plans to steal her inheritance. Glyde is assisted by sinister Count Fosco, a cultured, corpulent Italian who became the archetype of subsequent villains in crime novels. Their plot is threatened by Anne Catherick, a mysterious fugitive from a mental asylum who dresses in white, resembles Laura, and knows the secret of Glydes illegitimate birth. Through the perseverance of Hartright and Marian, Glyde and Fosco are defeated...

"The Queen of Hearts", title of Collins work first published in 1859, is also the school nickname of Jessie Yelverton, who arranges to stay for six weeks with her elderly guardian, Griffith, a retired lawyer. Griffith lives with his two brothers, Owen the clergyman and Morgan the doctor, in an isolated house in South Wales. Griffiths son, George, is in love with Jessie and the three brothers set out to delay her departure for ten days so that George can propose on his return from the Crimean war. In a kind of Arabian Nights story-telling, the three brothers draw on their professional experiences to entertain their young guest with a different entertaining and exciting story each evening.

Avec "La pierre de lune", Wilkie Collins a sans doute inventé le roman policier moderne. Contemporain et ami de Dickens, avec lequel il écrivit plusieurs nouvelles, cet écrivain prolifique et généreux est aussi un maitre des atmospheres mysterieuses. Coincidences tragiques, pressentiments et premonitions jouent souvent un role primordial dans les intrigues tortueuses de ses romans.Publie pour la premiere fois en 1879, "Lhotel hante" est un modele du genre. La comtesse Narona, heroine a la fois malefique et pitoyable une combinaison familiere a Collins, createur des personnages de mechants les plus complexes de la litterature victorienne epouse en des circonstances douteuses un lord anglais. "Lhotel hante" raconte, avec lironie et le brio habituels de lauteur, le mysterieux destin de ce mariage contre nature, depuis un cabinet medical de Harley jusquaux chambres trop hativement renovees dun hotel de Venise... Apparitions, alchimies malefiques, fievre et folie habitent jusqua son tragique denouement ce roman.

Publicada en 1884 y escrita por el novelista inglés Wilkie Collins con su habitual maestría, "La respuesta es no" es una lectura que atrapa y que se vuelve más adictiva conforme la trama avanza. Repleta de intriga, la novela no da tregua y los constantes giros contribuyen a mantenernos en vilo de principio a fin en una historia donde nada es lo que parece. "La respuesta es no" arranca presentandonos a la encantadora Emily, una muchacha huerfana cuyo padre murio cuatro años atras de forma repentina mientras ella se hallaba lejos de su hogar. Emily acaba de terminar su formacion en la escuela de la señora Ladd y esta a punto de entrar a trabajar como secretaria para un anciano estudioso que investiga antiguos jeroglificos. A partir de ahi se desencadenan los acontecimientos, en un vertigo que recuerda las mejores paginas de "La dama de blanco" y "La piedra lunar". Emily comienza a percatarse de que todo el mundo parece ocultarle algo: su tia agonizante, la misteriosa profesora que la visita justo la ultima noche que pasara en el colegio y que luego desaparece repentinamente, la fiel criada de su tia, cuyo comportamiento resulta de lo mas extraño La existencia de un secreto planea sobre Emily, quien se vera poco a poco envuelta en un torbellino de misterios cada vez mas inquietantes hasta llegar a una revelacion fatal. Mirabel, secretamente enamorado de Emily, se mostrara dispuesto a hacer lo que sea con tal de ayudarla. Pero el tambien encierra un secreto, el mas inquietante de todos

The special charm of No Name is the uncertainty in which the reader is kept. The most experienced of novel-readers is unable to predict whether Magdalen succeeds in her scheme, or marries Capt. Kirke, or retires from the scene to die, baffled and broken-hearted. Each crisis in the progress of the story takes the public by surprise. The death of the elder Vanstone, the marriage of Magdalen with his son, the trust by which Noel Vanstone prolongs the contest, even after his decease to quote the word which he himself preferred to the vulgar one of death are all startling surprises, unpredicted and unforeseen Much higher praise cannot be given. There is, too, both about Capt. Wragge and Old Mazey, a dry, delicate humour, for which before one should hardly have given Mr. Collins credit. No Name has added to the authors fame and many readers have derived so much pleasure in reading it, that it is hard to speak ungratefully of this book. Still it is fair to warn the novel-reading public that, if they want really to enjoy the great sensation novel, they should read it at the rate of not more than a chapter a day.

The author of The Woman in White and of No Name has had reprinted and published a collection of articles contributed by him to Household Words, and perhaps to other periodicals. The two papers which will attract most attention are probably those entitled respectively, "To Think, or Be Thought For," and "Dramatic Grub-street," inasmuch as upon their first appearance they provoked both private and public remonstrance, and they are now reprinted because Mr. Collins has seen a reason to abandon the convictions the expression of which called down upon him the aforesaid remonstrances. It is undoubted that this publication did not add much to the authors brilliant fame, but it is useful as a sort of meter by which one may measure his prodigious growth. This edition includes both original volumes.

A Rogues Life was published in a magazine some twenty years before it was made into a book. It is a very clever story, and the interest is well sustained throughout. There is just about enough of it, inasmuch as a short tale like this is more interesting than some of the authors longer works, wherein the complicated plots and lengthened mysteries are too apt to weary the reader before his curiosity is satisfied. We cannot help feeling quite an affection for the "Rogue," perhaps because most of the other characters in the story are as selfish, more wicked, and not so frankly conceited as he is, and have none of his courage, audacity, and cleverness to redeem them. We must all sympathize in his marriage, though it is not celebrated under the most favorable circumstances, he being liable to the extreme penalty of the law at the time. It seems hard that he should be captured, tried, and sentenced to transportation immediately after securing his wife; but this proves the beginning of his upward career of prosperity and respectability, and we leave him happily settled with Alicia in Australia. We do not wish to destroy the interest of a book which is so dependent on the plot, by telling more of the story, and therefore leave it without further comment to new readers.

This extraordinary work ranks among the foremost purely melodramatic or sensation novels of modern times. Mr. Collins has thrown a force and power into this story, of which the reader has only seen intimations in his former works. After opening the narrative with a cheerful sketch of Professor Pesea, an Italian Refugee, combining in his small person all the pleasant traits of his nation, the author at once begins his work, and in a few sentences throws a weird and mystic glow over the story, which we feel to deepen and extend, until the disclosure of the plot by the discovery of the register and subsequent death of Sir Percival Glyde. This effort is all the more remarkable when we examine the simplicity of the means employed, which consist of a series of Runic repetitions so strongly exemplied in Edgar Poes compositions. The misfortune which must attach to all novels of the terrific school, is, that the termination of necessity explains that which the imagination has been before allowed to dwell upon, and a feeling of disappointment must succeed the denouement however horrible that may be. This, Mr. Collins has avoided as far as practicable, in withdrawing the attention of the reader from the eclaircissement, by relating a tremendous interview, tremendous from the self-control exercised by both parties, between Hartright and Count Fosca, a villain of entirely new stamp, except in his fondness for pets, in which he resembles, if we remember correctly, one of the Council of Three who, while condemning thousands to the guillotine, would fondle his cat with feminine tenderness. But we will not spoil the plot, plain yet complex, elaborate but not confused. What we can do, however, is to advise those who enjoy the stronger forms of light literature, to lose no time in reading this most interesting novel.

Though perhaps this story does not equal, from a literary point of view, some of Collinss previous effortsit being less sensational and less complicated in its plotit is, nevertheless, one of the best he has ever written. It is an able and eloquent protest against the false state of society and that cruel sentiment which prevents an erring woman ever returning to the path of virtue. Aside from its moral purpose, the story is exceedingly interesting. It should be read thoughtfully by everyone.

The joint-effort of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins, apart from its merits or demerits, must excite curiosity and interest. It is clear that in " No Thoroughfare " the latter gentleman has had the lions share of the labour, whatever of lions share may fall to him besides. Mr. Dickenss portion is merely incidental, though some of his touches are surpassing fine and unmistakably marked. Mr. Collinss superb inventive faculty shows itself throughout, though under a little restriction here unfolding, doubling up, coiling, and uncoiling in its brilliant, baffling, serpentine fashion. And the result is exactly such as might be expected. Mr. Wilding is a little over-done, but full of humor ; and Joey Ladle, the cellar-man who insists on being a good pecking-machine is admirable. This is one of Joeys happiest deliverances : " Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it ; but I says, I have been accustomed to take my wine in at the pores of the skin, and took that way, it acts different." But we mustnt say more on the matter, at once for our own sake and that of both writers and readers.