COPYRIGHT INFO
The Wilkie Collins Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Over the last year, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has proved to be one of our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!). The Wilkie Collins Megapack was suggested by one of our readers, Tore Stokka.
A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS
The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
The Adventure Megapack
The Christmas Megapack
The Second Christmas Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Martian Megapack
The Military Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
The Mystery Megapack
The Science Fiction Megapack
The Second Science Fiction Megapack
The Third Science Fiction Megapack
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack
The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Pinocchio Megapack
The Pulp Fiction Megapack
The Rover Boys Megapack
The Steampunk Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Victorian Mystery Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Wilkie Collins Megapack
The Randall Garrett Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
INTRODUCTION
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and more than 100 nonfiction essays. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name.
Collins was a lifelong friend of Charles Dickens. A number of Collins’s works were first published in Dickens’s journals All the Year Round and Household Words. The two collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works, and some of Collins’s plays were performed by Dickens’s acting company.
Collins predicted the deterrence concept of mutually assured destruction that defined the Cold War nuclear era. Writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he stated, “I begin to believe in only one civilising influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men’s fears will force them to keep the peace.”
EARLY LIFE
Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, London, the son of a well-known Royal Academician landscape artist, William Collins. Named after his father, he swiftly became known by his second name (which honoured his godfather, David Wilkie). The family moved to Pond Street, Hampstead, in 1826. In 1828 Collins’s brother Charles Allston Collins was born. Between 1829 and 1830, the Collins family moved twice, first to Hampstead Square and then to Porchester Terrace, Bayswater. In 1835 Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy.
From 1836 to 1838 he lived with his parents in Italy and France, which made a great impression on him. From 1838 to 1840 he attended Mr. Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury. At this school he was bullied by a boy who would force Collins to tell him a story before allowing him to go to sleep. “It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware… When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure,” Collins later said.
In 1840 the family moved to 85 Oxford Terrace, Bayswater. In 1841 he left school and was apprenticed as a clerk to the firm of tea merchants Antrobus & Co. Collins’s first story “The Last Stage
