Wilkie Collins

William 'Wilkie' Collins, author of the perennial favourites The Moonstone and The Woman in White, friend and adviser to Charles Dickens and acclaimed as the grandfather of the modern detective story, was one of the nineteenth century's most popular authors. Indeed, Dickens described him as 'the writer who would come ahead of all the field'. He was born in London in 1824, the son of a landscape painter. After a private education and two years in Italy,...