The Dead Secret

by Wilkie Collins

Overview

The Dead Secret was Wilkie Collins's fourth published novel.

Like its predecessor Hide and Seek, the "secret" and the mystery are made clear to the reader, though not to the novel's characters, at an early stage.

The obsessed and arguably deranged Sarah prefigures the character of Hester Dethridge in Collins's Man and Wife, and more distantly those of Lydia Gwilt in Armadale and the female protagonist of his late novel, The Haunted Hotel.

The blind Leonard is another of Collins's disabled characters. He plays only a small part in the novel, but Collins drew another and more significant blind character in Lucilla, the heroine of his 1872 novel Poor Miss Finch.

Much of the novel is set in Cornwall, one of Collins's favourite English counties, which also features in his early melodrama Basil.

Contemporary critics held mixed opinions, some seeing an advance on Collins's previous Hide and Seek, and some less enthusiastic. Peters regards the handling of the "secret" as a weakness in construction, and does not rate the novel highly within Collins's oeuvre. Nadel's description of it as the last of Collins's "apprentice novels" emphasises the gap between it and Collins's next novel, the acclaimed The Woman in White. Nevertheless it has proved enduringly popular and remains in print. (wikipedia.org)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636375731
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	11/11/2022
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist and playwright. Born in London, Collins was raised in England, Italy, and France by William Collins, a renowned landscape painter, and his wife Harriet Geddes. After working for a short time as a tea merchant, he published Antonina (1850), his literary debut. He quickly became known as a leading author of sensation novels, a popular genre now recognized as a forerunner to detective fiction. Encouraged on by the success of his early work, Collins made a name for himself on the London literary scene. He soon befriended Charles Dickens, forming a strong bond grounded in friendship and mentorship that would last several decades. His novels The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868) are considered pioneering examples of mystery and detective fiction, and enabled Collins to become financially secure. Toward the end of the 1860s, at the height of his career, Collins began to suffer from numerous illnesses, including gout and opium addiction, which contributed to his decline as a writer. Beyond his literary work, Collins is seen as an early advocate for marriage reform, criticizing the institution and living a radically open romantic lifestyle.

Date of Birth:

December 8, 1824

Date of Death:

September 23, 1889

Place of Birth:

London, England

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Studied law at Lincoln¿s Inn, London

Editorial Reviews

Master Victorian entertainer Collins's fourth novel, and the first to be serialized in weekly installments, dates from 1857. It begins at Porthgenna Tower, the Cornish estate of Captain Treverton, at the deathbed of the Captain's wife. Before she dies, she insists on having her trusted maid, Sarah Leeson, write her husband a letter giving an account of a secret only the two women share, and swear, on pain of haunting, not to destroy the letter or to take it away from Porthgenna herself. Scrupulously following her mistress's bidding, Sarah hides the letter in an unused room of the Tower, leaves a note telling Treverton that his wife confided a secret to her she is afraid to reveal to him—and then vanishes from Cornwall, leaving the house, which Treverton has come to hate, to be abandoned, then purchased by a family whose blind son, Leonard Frankland, marries the Captain's daughter Rosamond years later when the real complications get underway. Modern readers, who will have no trouble figuring out the dead secret long before the characters do, are more likely to be engaged by the Dickensian minor characters, the hints of long-dormant intrigue, the heavy-breathing melodrama Collins would bring to perfection only three years later in The Woman in White, and, almost as an afterthought, the implied portrait of a whole social order few novelists in our more knowing time would ever attempt.

Kirkus Reviews

Nicholas Boulton’s narration of this wonderfully entertaining audiobook is simply astonishing. He keeps listeners on track though its shifts in time period and plot. As a work of "sensation fiction," this story of Rosamond Treverton Franklin's discovery of her late mother's secret was intended to excite and amuse its nineteenth-century audience, although the suspense is tame by contemporary standards. The magic lies in Boulton's flawless rendering of the richly nuanced characters of all ages, genders, nationalities, and social classes; the splendid English country settings; and the touches of humor throughout. Boulton subtly varies his pace to complement the narrative moment. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

Nicholas Boulton’s narration of this wonderfully entertaining audiobook is simply astonishing. He keeps listeners on track though its shifts in time period and plot. As a work of "sensation fiction," this story of Rosamond Treverton Franklin's discovery of her late mother's secret was intended to excite and amuse its nineteenth-century audience, although the suspense is tame by contemporary standards. The magic lies in Boulton's flawless rendering of the richly nuanced characters of all ages, genders, nationalities, and social classes; the splendid English country settings; and the touches of humor throughout. Boulton subtly varies his pace to complement the narrative moment. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile