The Public Face of Wilkie Collins:
The Collected Letters
Editors: William Baker, Andrew Gasson, Graham Law and Paul Lewis
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 764 3: 234x156mm: £350.00/$625.00
The four volumes of The Public Face of Wilkie Collins bring into one continuous chronological sequence nearly 3000 letters by Wilkie Collins, one of the most successful Victorian writers. They range from the short letter to his mother written in 1831 when Collins was just 7 years old to the last note to his doctor scrawled almost illegibly two days before his death at 65 in 1889.
His letters are an essential research tool for anyone studying Victorian fiction – whether from the point of view of its key role in literary development or its central place in publishing history, Victorian theatre or travel, or indeed anyone who just wants a window opened on Victorian England in nearly three quarters of a million wonderful words by one of its key writers.
The editors have transcribed 2500 letters, around 700 of them previously unidentified, and have given them all a full scholarly annotation and context. These letters are all published in full. The 460 letters which have already received modern scholarly publication – Baker & Clarke (1999) – are summarized in their correct place
Contents
Collins was the first major author to use a literary agent and more than 290 letters to Alexander Pollock Watt are included, as are over 100 earlier letters to his lawyers Benham & Tindell.
Collins also played a major role in the development of the concept of intellectual property and the importance to writers of using multiple formats and outlets to maximize their financial returns. These battles are witnessed by letters to publishers such as Richard Bentley, Cassell Petter & Galpin, Chatto & Windus, Tillotsons, Sampson Low, Harper & Brothers, Bernard Tauchnitz, Hunter Rose & Co, and Bellinfante Brothers.
He also writes movingly to his friends – artists Holman Hunt, William Frith, John Linnell, Edward Ward, Edwin Landseer, Frederic Leighton, Ford Maddox Brown, his brother Charles Allston Collins and John Millais, the banker Charles Ward, the sailing companion Edward Pigott; writers Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Mark Lemon, John Forster, Walter Besant, Edmund Yates, Henry Chorley, William H Wills, James Payn, Charles Kent, Frances Power Cobbe, James Emmerson Tennent, Hall Caine, Robert du Pontavice de Heussey and Charles Reade; businessmen Sebastian Schlesinger and Frederick Lehmann; his doctor Francis Carr Beard; and people who were just friends like Anne le Poer Wynne, Nina Lehmann, Georgina Hogarth, Catherine Dickens and Fanny Mitchell.
His lifelong love of visiting theatres and writing for the stage is reflected in letters to actors Laura Seymour, Marie Wilson, Ada Cavendish, Squire Bancroft, Lillie Langtry, Charles Kean, Benjamin Webster, Mary Anderson, Wybert Reeve, Frank Archer, Carlotta LeClerq, Dion Boucicault, Mary Anderson, Arthur Cecil Blunt, Roma le Thière and those involved with the theatre including John Palgrave Simpson, John Hollingshead, William Moy Thomas and Henry Herman.
Collins loved America and letters to his American friends include diplomat John Bigelow, photographer Napoleon Sarony, impresario Augustin Daly, actress Kate Field, publisher George Childs, writer William Winter, poet Paul Hamilton Hayne, journalist William A Seaver, Olive Logan Sikes, publisher Perry Mason & Co, humorist Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet Henry Longfellow, agent John Bonner, publisher James Ripley Osgood and others.
Volume 1
Frontispiece
Lists of Plates and Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chronology
Editorial Principles
Acknowledgements
Letters: 1831–1864
Volume 2
Frontispiece
Chronology 1865–1873
Letters: 1865–1873
Volume 3
Frontispiece
Chronology 1874-1883
Letters: 1874–1883
Volume 4
Frontispiece
Chronology 1884-1889
Letters: 1884-1889
Letter Fragments of Unknown Date
Appendix A: Last Things [correspondence between those around Collins at the time of his death]
Appendix B: Publishing Agreements
Addenda and Corrigenda
Index of Recipients
Index of Subjects
Reviews
'Together with the 500 or so printed in William Baker and William M Clarke's 1999 two-volume edition, we now have all of Collins's known letters, some 3, 000 in total, in print...yet this is no dull collection of leftovers. Editorially, it is a much better work than its precursor, as Baker is joined by three new colleagues, Andrew Gasson, Graham Law and Paul Lewis, who have markedly improved both textual reliability and the quality of annotation, as well as correcting many mistakes of the earlier edition.'
– John Bowen, The Times Literary Supplement
'Anybody seriously interested in Victorian culture, particularly literary culture and Collins's place in it, will appreciate the materials collected here...these volumes should enjoy a long shelf life. Summing Up: Highly recommended.'
– B F Fisher, CHOICE