The Wilkie Collins Megapack. Wilkie ` Collins

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      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

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