 First edition title page | |
| Author | Wilkie Collins |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | sensation novel |
Publication date | 1872 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Preceded by | The Moonstone |
| Followed by | The Law and the Lady |
Poor Miss Finch (1872) by Wilkie Collins is a novel about a young blind woman who temporarily regains her sight while finding herself in a romantic triangle with two brothers.
Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Pratolungo, arrives to serve as her paid companion, Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, her shy and reclusive neighbour, also wealthy, who devotes himself to craftsmanship in precious metals.
After being attacked and knocked unconscious by robbers, Oscar is nursed by Lucilla and falls in love with her, and the couple become engaged. Their plans are jeopardized by Oscar's epilepsy, a result of the blow to his head. The only effective treatment, a silver compound, has the side-effect of turning his skin a permanent, dark blue-grey. Despite her blindness, Lucilla suffers a violent phobia of dark colours, including dark-complexioned people, and family and friends conceal Oscar's condition from her.
Meanwhile, Oscar's twin brother, Nugent, returns from America, where he has dissipated his fortune pursuing a career as a painter. Oscar is devoted to his brother, who is as outgoing, confident and charming as Oscar is diffident and awkward. Knowing of Lucilla's blindness, Nugent has arranged for her to be examined by a famous German oculist, Herr Grosse. Herr Grosse and an English oculist each examine Lucilla but disagree on her prognosis. Lucilla elects to be operated on by Herr Grosse, who believes he can cure her. After the operation, but before the bandages are taken off, Madame Pratolungo pressures Oscar into telling Lucilla of his disfigurement, but his nerve fails and, instead, he tells her it is Nugent who has been disfigured.
Nugent is secretly infatuated with Lucilla and now manipulates her into believing that he is Oscar. As Lucilla gradually regains her sight, Herr Grosse forbids family and friends from undeceiving her, since the shock might imperil her recovery. Oscar goes abroad, resigning his fiancée to his brother in despair. Madame Pratolungo intervenes decisively with Nugent, appealing to his conscience and threatening him with exposure if he continues with his plan to marry Lucilla under Oscar's name. He promises to go abroad to find his brother and return him home.
Nugent soon returns to England and tracks Lucilla to the seaside, where, on Herr Grosse's orders, she is staying with her aunt, away from her immediate family. He pressures her to marry as soon as possible, without her family's knowledge, and works to poison her trust in Madame Pratolungo, who is away in Marseilles attending to her wayward father. Detecting but not understanding the change in her supposed fiancé, Lucilla becomes distraught, over-strains her eyes and begins to lose her vision.
In the novel's denouement, Madame Pratolungo locates Oscar with the help of a French detective. His experiences have revealed an unexpected strength of character, and she conceives a new respect for him. The two of them race home to England to stop the marriage while there is still time. Held virtually prisoner at a Dubourg cousin's house, Lucilla is again totally blind. With the help of a kindly servant, she escapes to meet them, immediately recognizes the true Oscar, and is told the full story by Madame Pratolungo. A penitent Nugent returns to America, where he later dies on a polar expedition. Lucilla and Oscar settle in Dimchurch to raise a family, with Madame Pratolungo as her companion. Perfectly content in her blindness, she refuses Herr Grosse's offers to attempt another operation.
Lucilla Finch - 21 year old blind, daughter of rector of Dimchurch, Sussex
Madame Pratolunga - Narrator and Paid Companion of Lucilla Finch
Oscar Dubourg - Shy and Reclusive neighbour of Narrator, suffers epilepsy
Nugent Dubourg - Oscar's twin brother, Painter
Herr Grosse - German Oculist
Mr. Sebright - Conservative English Oculist
Selina (Called Jicks) - 3 year old half sister of Lucilla
Miss Batchford - Aunt Of Lucilla
 | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (February 2016) |
Poor Miss Finch public domain audiobook at LibriVox | Novels |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| Short stories |
| |
| Short story collections |
| |
| Plays |
| |
| People |
| |
Madame Curie is a 1943 American biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and produced by Sidney Franklin from a screenplay by Paul Osborn, Paul H. Rameau, and Aldous Huxley (uncredited), adapted from the biography by Ève Curie. It stars Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, with supporting performances by Robert Walker, Henry Travers, and Albert Bassermann.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a 1964 musical romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music by Michel Legrand. Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo star as two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by circumstance. The film's dialogue is entirely sung as recitative, including casual conversation, and is sung-through, or through-composed, like some operas and stage musicals. It has been seen as the second of an informal tetralogy of Demy films that share some of the same actors, characters, and overall atmosphere of romantic melancholy, coming after Lola (1961) and before The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Model Shop (1969). The French-language film was a co-production between France and West Germany.
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature.
Invisible Monsters is a novel by American writer Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1999. It is his third novel to be published, though it was his second written novel. The novel was originally supposed to be Palahniuk's first novel to be published, but it was rejected by the publisher for being too disturbing. After the success of his novel Fight Club, Invisible Monsters was given a second chance, and a revised version of it was published. The first edition was released in paperback in 1999, and on June 11, 2012, it was published in hardcover, in a revised edition titled Invisible Monsters Remix (ISBN 978-0393083521).
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird is a 1985 American musical road comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis and written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. Based on the children's television series Sesame Street created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, it was the first theatrical feature-length Sesame Street film. It stars Muppet performers Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson and Frank Oz alongside Sandra Bernhard, John Candy, Chevy Chase, Joe Flaherty, Waylon Jennings, and Dave Thomas with Sesame Street regulars Linda Bove, Emilio Delgado, Loretta Long, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, Alaina Reed, and Kermit Love in supporting roles and the voices of Laraine Newman, Brian Hohlfeld, Cathy Silvers, Eddie Deezen, and Sally Kellerman.
Atonement is a 2001 British metafictional novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.
Madame Xanadu is a comic book mystic published by DC Comics. The character is identified with Nimue, the sorceress from Arthurian mythology made popular by Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Kim Dickens is an American actress. Her film debut was in the 1995 comedy film Palookaville. Dickens played lead roles in the films Truth or Consequences, N.M. (1997), Zero Effect (1998) and Mercury Rising (1998). Her other films include Great Expectations (1998), Hollow Man (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003), Thank You for Smoking (2005), The Blind Side (2009), Gone Girl (2014), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), Lizzie (2018), Land (2021), and The Good Nurse (2022).
A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by British author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the UK on 8 March 1917 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the US on 1 February 1933 by A. L. Burt and Co., New York. All the stories had previously appeared in periodicals, usually The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom and The Red Book Magazine or The Saturday Evening Post in the United States.
The Small Bachelor is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 28 April 1927 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the United States on 17 June 1927 by George H. Doran, New York.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 American coming-of-age legal drama crime film directed by Robert Mulligan starring Gregory Peck and Mary Badham, with Phillip Alford, John Megna, Frank Overton, James Anderson, and Brock Peters in supporting roles. It marked the film debut of Robert Duvall, William Windom, and Alice Ghostley. Adapted by Horton Foote, from Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, it follows a lawyer (Peck) in Depression-era Alabama defending a black man (Peters) charged with rape while educating his children against prejudice.
Lady of Quality is the final Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer. Published in the UK by The Bodley Head in 1972, and by E. P. Dutton in the U. S., it was the last of her novels to be published during her lifetime.
DC Showcase: Jonah Hex is a 2010 short animated Western superhero direct-to-video short film directed by Joaquim Dos Santos and written by noted western comics writer Joe R. Lansdale, featuring the voice of Thomas Jane as disfigured bounty hunter Jonah Hex on the trail of a ruthless brothel madame who has murdered his latest quarry. The film, which was released on July 27, 2010 as a bonus feature on the Batman: Under the Red Hood 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, was the second of the DC Showcase series and was included on the compilation DVD DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection in an extended version.
Beautiful Creatures is a 2009 American young adult novel written by authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl and the first book in the Caster Chronicles series. The book was published on December 1, 2009 by Little, Brown, and Company. In the UK, Beautiful Creatures is published by Penguin Books.
The Light That Failed is a 1939 drama film based on Rudyard Kipling's 1891 novel of the same name. It stars Ronald Colman as an artist who is going blind.
The Dead Secret is a novel published by Wilkie Collins, first in 1857 as a series in Charles Dickens' Household Words weekly magazine and later the same year as a book.
Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and photographer.