Mystery and Crime Collins, Wilkie: Dream Woman (3 versions). v1. 30 Aug 2021

[GrannyGrump]

When Francis is roused from his sleep on the eve of his birthday and confronted by the sight of a woman trying to stab him, he is unsure whether she is real or an apparition. Years later, against the wishes of his mother, he marries Alicia, a woman with a strange resemblance to the mysterious visitor, who ends up attacking him on his birthday, before vanishing from his life. Is Francis’s wife a ghost, a demon, or a living human being? And will the prophecy of the night-time visitation be fulfilled one day?

This ebook contains all three versions of the story (see publishing history below).

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William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

Collins remains most famous for his novels The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868), in which he pioneered a new style of “sensation” writing, the influence of which can still be seen in today’s culture in the genres of crime, mystery and suspense. The Moonstone is considered to be the first modern English detective novel.

He is also noted for his close relationship with Charles Dickens, who regarded him as the most talented of his many protégés.

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The original version of this story was published in Household Words magazine (“The Holly-Tree Inn,” chapter “The Ostler”, Christmas number 1855).

Revised for the collection The Queen of Hearts (1859) as “Brother Morgan’s story of the Dream-Woman.”

Expanded and revised for American reading tour 1873; this expanded version appeared in The Frozen Deep and Other Stories (1874) as “The Dream Woman: a Mystery in Four Narratives”; and in Alicia Warlock (a Mystery) and Other Stories (1875).

This ebook is in the public domain worldwide, because the authors died more than 100 years ago, and contents were published prior to 1925.
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