`This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questio...

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, Rutherford College, University of Kent The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. Th...

The three novellas gathered here--Miss or Mrs? (1871), The Haunted Hotel (1878), and The Guilty River (1886)--demonstrate Collins's ability to construct a gripping situation and create an atmosphere of mystery and menace. Fast-paced a...