Wilkie Collins, página 5 de 33

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 Adapted by Christopher Hall Activities by Frederick Garland Mystery & horror Late one night, on a lonely road near London, Walter Hartright, a young drawing teacher, meets a solitary woman dressed in white. This is the opening scene of The Woman in White, a great Victorian sensation novel, full of mystery, excitement, and suspense. Who is the mysterious woman in white, and why is she alone on the road to London at midnight? Dossier: Victorian Asylums Exit test

One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamonda famous gem in the native annals of India.The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this daythe name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of gems, supposed to be affected by the lunar influencesthe moon, in this latter case also, giving the name by which the stone is still known to collectors in our own time.The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh century of the Christian era.At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni, crossed India; seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its treasures the famous temple, which had stood for centuriesthe shrine of Hindoo pilgrimage, and the wonder of the Eastern world.Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three Brahmins, the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead, was removed by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred cities of Indiathe city of Benares.Here, in a new shrinein a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof supported by pillars of goldthe moon-god was set up and worshipped. Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the forehead of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their robes. The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before his will. The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal who laid hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name who received it after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be written over the gates of the shrine in letters of gold.

Frank Aldersley becomes engaged to Clara Burnham on the eve of his departure on a journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Unbeknownst to him, Richard Wardour, his spurned rival, joins the crew of another ship belonging to the same expedition. When the ships get trapped in the ice and the men are randomly drawn into the same search party, Richard finds himself torn between his desire for revenge and the need for solidarity in the face of adversity. Based on an actual doomed mission to the Arctic captained by Sir John Franklin, and initially written for the stage in collaboration with Dickens - who also acted in the play - The Frozen Deep is an action-packed tale of vengeance and sacrifice

Las diferentes actitudes que adoptarán dos hermanas de buena posición cuando, al morir sus padres, son desposeídas de sus bienes al revelarse que son ilegítimas componen la compleja trama de esta obra. Nuevamente, Collins nos brinda una obra magistral.Wilkie Collins hijo del paisajista William Collins, nacio en Londres en 1824. Fue aprendiz en una compañia de comercio de te, estudio leyes e hizo sus pinitos como pintor y actor antes de conocer a Charles Dickens en 1851, cuyo encuentro fue decisivo para la trayectoria literaria de ambos. Murio en Londres en 1889, despues de una larga carrera de exitos.

Con El secreto de Sarah Wilkie Collins inicia un género en el que demuestra un talento insuperable: la novela de intriga. Dotado de una refinada técnica, el autor de La piedra lunar y La dama de blanco es capaz de urdir tramas apasionantes que van mucho mas alla del clasico folletin romantico de la epoca o de la por entonce s balbuciente novela detectivesca.

In acknowledgment of the services which he has rendered to the cause of literature by his "Life of Goldsmith;" and in affectionate remembrance of a friendship which is associated with some of the happiest years of my life.Readers in generalon whose friendly reception experience has given me some reason to relywill, I venture to hope, appreciate whatever merit there may be in this story without any prefatory pleading for it on my part. They will, I think, see that it has not been hastily meditated or idly wrought out. They will judge it accordingly, and I ask no more.Readers in particular will, I have some reason to suppose, be here and there disturbed, perhaps even offended, by finding that "Armadale" oversteps, in more than one direction, the narrow limits within which they are disposed to restrict the development of modern fictionif they can.Nothing that I could say to these persons here would help me with them as Time will help me if my work lasts. I am not afraid of my design being permanently misunderstood, provided the execution has done it any sort of justice. Estimated by the clap-trap morality of the present day, this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which is of all time, it is only a book that is daring enough to speak the truth.LONDON, April, 1866.

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.

En la trayectoria de Wilkie Collins, La ley y la dama constituye un hito destacado, y con frecuencia ha sido considerada la novela más fascinante de su última etapa, en perfecta sintonía con la tradicion de la gran literatura.Pocos dias despues de su boda, Valeria Woodville descubre un inconfesable secreto que empaña el pasado de su esposo y que ahora amenaza con serpararlos. Alentada por su amor, Valeria se dedicara por entero a investigar la verdad para restituir el honor de Eustace, su marido, y salvar su matrimonio. Su empeño la llevara a adentrarse en un laberinto de complicaciones, y a asumir riesgos inusitados para una mujer de la Inglaterra victoriana. De la mano de Valeria, el lector se sumerge rapidamente en la trama de la narracion y descubre las grandezas y miserias de un mundo que, sin ser el nuestro, ha dejado una profunda impronta en la sociedad actual.

THE main purpose of this story is to appeal to the readers interest in a subject which has been the theme of some of the greatest writers, living and deadbut which has never been, and can never be, exhausted, because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known. It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen," which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all meansby a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great encouragement to me (during the publication of my story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree, consider as an object achieved.Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be found grouped, in sharp contrastcontrast, for the most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly predominant. I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Artbut because experience has taught me (what the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in the texture of human life.To pass from the Characters to the Story, it will be seen that the narrative related in these pages has been constructed on a plan which differs from the plan followed in my last novel, and in some other of my works published at an earlier date.