After Dark (short story collection)

Last updated
After Dark
Author Wilkie Collins
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Mystery fiction
Short stories
Publisher Smith, Elder & Co.
Publication date
1856
Media typePrint (hardback)
OCLC 4341884

After Dark is a collection of six short stories by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1856. It was the author's first collection of short stories. Five of the stories were previously published in Household Words , a magazine edited by Charles Dickens.

Contents

Structure

The stories are linked by a narrative framework.

At the beginning and end of the book are "Leaves from Leah's Diary": William Kerby, a travelling portrait-painter, is in danger of losing his sight, and is required by his doctor to cease painting for a while. His wife Leah realizes that destitution threatens. He is a good story-teller, and Leah has the idea of writing down his stories and publishing them.

Each story has a prologue, which was added to the original story that appeared in Household Words.

Contents

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Gaskell</span> English writer (1810–1865)

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her work is of interest to social historians as well as readers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–53), North and South (1854–55), and Wives and Daughters (1865), each having been adapted for television by the BBC.

<i>The King in Yellow</i> 1895 book of short stories by Robert W. Chambers

The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The first half of the book features highly esteemed horror stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. Lin Carter called it "an absolute masterpiece, probably the single greatest book of weird fantasy written in this country between the death of Poe and the rise of Lovecraft."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilkie Collins</span> English novelist and playwright (1824–1889)

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which has been proposed as the first modern English detective novel.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1854.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1852.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Siddal</span> Pre-Raphaelite model, poet, and artist (1829–1862)

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, poet, and artists' model. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean. Siddal was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and especially by her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

<i>Household Words</i> English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s

Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s. It took its name from the line in Shakespeare's Henry V: "Familiar in his mouth as household words."

<i>All the Year Round</i>

All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to differences with his former publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xavier de Maistre</span> French writer (1763–1852)

Xavier de Maistre of Savoy lived largely as a military man but is known as a French writer. The younger brother of Joseph de Maistre, a noted philosopher and counter-revolutionary, Xavier was born to an aristocratic family at Chambéry in October 1763. He served when young in the army of Piedmont-Sardinia, and in 1790 wrote his fantasy Voyage autour de ma chambre, when he was under arrest in Turin as the consequence of a duel.

<i>The Woman in White</i> (novel) 1859 novel by Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White is Wilkie Collins's fifth published novel, written in 1859 and set from 1849 to 1850. It is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Hill (writer)</span> American writer

Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Collins (painter)</span> English painter

William Collins was an English landscape and genre painter. His sentimental paintings of poor people enjoying nature became a posthumous high fashion, notably in the 1870s when his market price rose higher than Constable and stayed so until 1894. Turner, his model, far exceeded him in value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A House to Let</span>

"A House to Let" is a short story by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. It was originally published in 1858 in the Christmas edition of Dickens's Household Words magazine. Collins wrote the introduction and collaborated with Dickens on the second story and ending, while Gaskell and Proctor wrote the remainder.

The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) includes more than a dozen major novels, many short stories, several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles. Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.

<i>Desperate Romantics</i> British television drama series

Desperate Romantics is a six-part television drama serial about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, first broadcast on BBC Two between 21 July and 25 August 2009.

Harriet Parr (1828–1900) was an English author of the Victorian era, who wrote under the pseudonym Holme Lee. She also wrote stories for children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilkie Collins bibliography</span>

This is a bibliography of the works of Wilkie Collins.

"A Terribly Strange Bed" is a short story by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1852 in Household Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens.

"The Lady of Glenwith Grange" is a novella by the nineteenth-century English writer Wilkie Collins. The story was first published as one of six short stories by Collins in a collection entitled After Dark, published in 1856; it was his first collection of short stories.

<i>In the Grip of Terror</i> Horror anthology

In the Grip of Terror is an anthology of horror short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in paperback by Permabooks in 1951.

References