Wilkie Collins

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins (born January 8, 1824 in London ; died September 23, 1889 there ) was a British writer and author of the first mystery thriller (see also: detective novel ).

Life

Collins' grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Wilkie Collins was born in London. His father, William Collins , was a landscape painter , who initially saw his son's future not in art, but in the tea trade. After this little inclination was down to business, he studied law at Lincoln's Inn , where he approval as 1851 Lawyer received. Wilkie's younger brother was the Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles Allston Collins .

Wilkie Collins found his actual calling as a writer: The Last Stagecoachman had already appeared in Illuminated Magazine in 1843 . His first book publication was a biography of his father (Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., RA), which appeared a year after his death in 1847. From then on he published 27 novels and more than 50 short stories in quick succession : in 1850 Antonina or The Fall of Rome (from the genre of the historical novel that was particularly popular at the time ), Basil appeared in 1852 , and further works almost every year. He would become one of the most popular (and best-paid) authors of his time. His most famous works are Die Frau in Weiß ( The Woman in White , 1860) and Der Monddiamant ( The Moonstone , 1868). Both novels would be today as mystery thriller or in the case of The Moonstone as Detective Novel call, and you can Wilkie Collins with some justification regarded as one of the founders of this genre. The late work The Haunted Hotel (1878) represents a contribution to the Victorian novel of sensation that stands out from the crowd with its psychological content and possibly the first account of brain death in English-language literature . He wrote the with his novel Law and Woman (1885) first detective novel in literary history with a female detective.

Wilkie Collins is considered one of the great Victorian writers today . He was a close friend of Charles Dickens ', in whose shadow he stood long after his death. Dickens and Collins also wrote lyrics together. The best known of the two is The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices . It wasn't until the later 20th century that Collins was rediscovered and is now being relocated again. Wilkie Collins died on September 23, 1889 at the age of 65 in London and was buried there in Kensal Green Cemetery .

Works

Wilkie Collins (portrait by John Everett Millais , 1850)

Novels

  • Antonina , 1850
  • Basil , 1852 (German as: Basils Liebe )
  • Mr Wray's Cash Box , 1852
  • Hide and Seek , 1854 (German as: hide and seek )
  • The Dead Secret , 1856 (German as: The secret of the myrtle room )
  • The Woman in White , 1860 (German translations by C. Büchele 1862, Marie Scott 1891 as The White Woman , Arno Schmidt 1965 as: The Woman in White )
  • No Name , 1862 (German as: Ohne Namen, Sebastian Vogel 2017 as: The Nameless)
  • Armadale , 1866 (German as: The red scarf )
  • The Moonstone , 1868 (German as: Der Monddiamant )
  • Man and Wife , 1870
  • Poor Miss Finch , 1872 (German as: Lucilla )
  • Miss or Mrs? , 1873 (German as: Fräulein or Frau )
  • The New Magdalen , 1873 (German as: Die neue Magdalena )
  • The Law and The Lady , 1875 (German as: Law and Women , Not Proved , what a woman can and a woman wants justice )
  • The Two Destinies , 1876
  • The Haunted Hotel , 1878 (German as: The mysterious Palazzo and the mysterious hotel )
  • The Fallen Leaves , 1879 (German as: Gefallene Blätter )
  • A rogue's life. From his birth to his marriage , 1879 (published in 1856 as A Rogue's Life - written by Himself )
  • My Lady's Money, 1879 (published in 1877 as: My Lady's Money. An episode in the life of a young girl )
  • Jezebel's Daughter, 1880 (German as: Jezebel's daughter )
  • The Black Robe , 1881 (German as: The Black Rock )
  • Heart and Science , 1883 (German as: Herz und Wissen )
  • "I Say No" , 1884 (German as: I say no )
  • The Evil Genius , 1886 (German as: Der böse Genius )
  • The Guilty River , 1886
  • The Legacy of Cain , 1889
  • Blind Love , 1889 (Chapters 49ff. Were completed by Walter Besant according to Collins' notes, German as: Blinde Liebe )

Short stories

Wilkie Collins has written, translated and translated about 50 short stories . a .:

  • A Terribly Strange Bed, 1852 (first printed in Household Words by Charles Dickens)
    • Übers. NN: An incredibly strange bed in The Carousel of Adventure. Adventurous stories of world literature. Staufen-Verlag, Cologne 1947, pp. 271-298 full text , slightly shortened and z. Sometimes different text (p. 298: the criminals end up "on the gallows"; online: they end up on "the galleys" and others)
    • Further translations with slightly different titles by Ilse Hecht ( The Story of a Horribly Strange Bed ) 1948, Hedi Kraushaar 1964, and Irma Wehrli, Manesse Library of World Literature , 1998
    • Back in the toilet: a horrible strange bed. And other scary stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1991

Correspondence

  • William Collins, William Baker (Eds.): The public face of Wilkie Collins. The collected letters. 4 volumes. Pickering & Chatto, London 2005.

Works on the web (selection)

Film adaptations

Based on scripts by Herbert Asmodi and the music by Hans Jönsson , the director Wilhelm Semmelroth staged the following multi-part, true-to-the-factory television adaptations for WDR in the 1970s, which were broadcast on ARD with great success and high levels of audience participation :

As early as 1955, a German film adaptation of the novel “The Moonstone” was made under the title “Sergeant Cuff can't find the moonstone” with Bruno Huebner and Heinz Bennent in the lead roles within the ARD series “The Gallery of the Great Detectives” .

other international films:

  • 1949: The woman in white - Director: Peter Godfrey
  • 1981: The Woman in White (Shenschtschina w belom) - Director: Vadim Derbenjew
  • 1998: Basils Liebe (Basil) - Director: Radha Bharadwaj

literature

  • Ernst von Wolzog : Wilkie Collins. A critical biographical attempt. Leipzig: Unflad, 1885. ( full text )
  • Hans Sehlbach: Investigations into the novel art of Wilkie Collins. Frommann, Jena 1931
  • Kenneth Robinson: Wilkie Collins, a biography . Publisher Macmillan, New York, 1952 on the Internet Archive (online)
  • William M. Clarke: The secret life of Wilkie Collins , London: Allison & Busby, 1988, ISBN 0-85031-960-9
  • Kirsten Hüttner: Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White". Analysis, reception and literary criticism of a Victorian bestseller. Dissertation, University of Gießen 1996. WVT, Trier 1996, ISBN 3-88476-227-3
  • Graham Law and Andrew Maunder: Wilkie Collins: a literary life , Basingstoke [et al. a.]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, ISBN 978-1-403-94896-0
  • Dan Simmons: Drood: a novel , London: Quercus, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84724-932-6
  • Dan Simmons: Drood: Roman , from the American. Engl. By Friedrich Mader, Munich: Heyne, 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-26598-1
  • Melisa Kklimaszewski: Letter lives: Wilkie Collins , London: Hesperus Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-84391-915-5
  • Peter Ackroyd: Wilkie Collins , London: Chatto & Windus, 2012, ISBN 978-0-701-16990-9
  • Andrew Lycett: Wilkie Collins: a life of sensation , London: Hutchinson, 2013, ISBN 978-0-09-193709-6

Web links

Commons : Wilkie Collins  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Wilkie Collins  - Sources and full texts

notes

  1. ↑ 1856 is also passed down, that is the year of the first anthology in which the story was written
  2. ↑ see Lemma in the English Wikipedia A Terribly Strange Bed
  3. ↑ cf. here
  4. ↑ for more online translations go to the German fan page, s. Web links
personal data
SURNAME Collins, Wilkie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Collins, William Wilkie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and author of the first "Mystery Thriller"
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1889
Place of death London