Mystery and Crime Collins, Wilkie: The Law and the Lady, v1, 11 Jan 2015

[AlexBell]

Wilkie Collins lived in London from 1824 to 1889, a period in which 'the inevitable self-assertion of wealth, so amiably deplored by the prosperous and the rich; [was] so bitterly familiar to the unfortunate and the poor.'

He was short, plump, and short sighted; despite his severe suffering from gout he was a traveller, bon vivant, journalist, satirist, essayist, novelist, dramatist and social activist; and friend, collaborator, and rival of Charles Dickens. He became addicted to laudanum, and several of his characters praise it.

One of his characters says '... isn't it the original intention or purpose... of a work of fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story?... What I want is something that seizes hold of my interest... something that keeps me reading, reading, reading, in a breathless state to find out the end...'

The Law and the Lady was serialised in The Graphic September 1874 to March 1975, published in three volumes in 1875 by Chatto & Windus, and in one volume editions by Chatto & Windus 1876-1913.

This melodrama could be classed as historical fiction because of vivid descriptions of settings and attitudes very different from ours, or as romantic fiction in which the protagonists fall in love at first sight and have to struggle to maintain their relationship, or as horror fiction because of a horribly deformed character and his effect on those around him. I have put it in the mystery and crime genre since the female protagonist has to overcome 'The Scotch Verdict' given against her husband at his trial for the murder of his first wife.

The source text was Project Gutenberg 1622-h.htm, checked against a pdf of the Chatto & Windus 1903 edition from the Internet Archive. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotes, restored diacritics and scene breaks, set off letters and documents as blockquotes and set footnotes as endnotes, used British English, and made changes to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

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