The Dead Secret

Last updated

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.

Contents

Plot summary

The secret of the title is the parentage of the heroine, Rosamond Treverton, who has been passed off as the daughter of the wealthy former actress Mrs. Treverton of Porthgenna Tower, but is in fact the illegitimate child of her servant Sarah Leeson by a local miner. Mrs. Treverton’s motive was to provide her husband with a child, being apparently unable to bear children herself. Sarah writes down the details of the secret from the words of the dying Mrs. Treverton, and hides the paper bearing the message in an unused room at Porthgenna.

The novel then jumps forward some twenty years. Rosamond has married the blind Leonard Frankland, who now owns Porthgenna Tower. Sarah, now living under her married name, acts as a nurse after Rosamond's birth, and gives Rosamund a cryptic warning to avoid the room in which the Secret is hidden. On a visit to Porthgenna, Rosamond finds the paper detailing the secret and reveals it to Leonard. Leonard, who originally believed that Rosamond was a wealthy heiress, accepts that his wife is illegitimate, but refuses to accept her inheritance as the presumed daughter of the Trevertons. In the course of things, this would now pass to Mrs. Treverton’s miserly brother-in-law Andrew (whose introduction, together with his villainous servant, provides some comic relief in the novel). But Andrew Treverton, somewhat out of character, refuses to accept the windfall and Rosamond remains the heiress of the Trevertons in the expected happy ending.

Themes and influences

Like its predecessor Hide and Seek , the “secret” and the mystery are made clear to the reader, though not to the novel’s characters, at an early stage.

The obsessed and arguably deranged Sarah prefigures the character of Hester Dethridge in Collins's Man and Wife , and more distantly those of Lydia Gwilt in Armadale and the female protagonist of his late novel, The Haunted Hotel.

The blind Leonard is another of Collins's disabled characters. He plays only a small part in the novel, but Collins drew another and more significant blind character in Lucilla, the heroine of his 1872 novel Poor Miss Finch .

Much of the novel is set in Cornwall, one of Collins's favorite English counties, which also features in his early melodrama Basil .

Publication

The Dead Secret was first published serially in Charles Dickens' Household Words weekly magazine in 1857, with 23 installments between January 3rd and June 13th. [1] It was published in book form by Bradbury & Evans later the same year.[ citation needed ]

Critical reception

Contemporary critics held mixed opinions, some seeing an advance on Collins's previous Hide and Seek, and some less enthusiastic. [2] Peters [2] regards the handling of the “secret” as a weakness in construction, and does not rate the novel highly within Collins's oeuvre. Nadel’s description [3] of it as the last of Collins's "apprentice novels” emphasizes the gap between it and Collins's next novel, the acclaimed The Woman in White. Nevertheless it has proved enduringly popular and remains in print.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Dickens</span> English novelist and social critic (1812–1870)

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

<i>David Copperfield</i> 1849–1850 novel by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. As such, it is typically categorized in the bildungsroman genre. It was published as a serial in 1849 and 1850 and then as a book in 1850.

<i>Great Expectations</i> 1860–1861 novel by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. The novel is a Bildungsroman and depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman & Hall published the novel in three volumes.

<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 established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.

<i>Oliver Twist</i> 1837–1839 novel by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the titular orphan, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of his parentage, and reconnects with his remaining family.

<i>Middlemarch</i> 1871–1872 novel by George Eliot

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.

<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>Bleak House</i> 1852–1853 novel by Charles Dickens

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

<i>Our Mutual Friend</i> 1864–1865 novel by Charles Dickens

Our Mutual Friend, written in 1864–1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting the book's character Bella Wilfer, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life".

<i>All the Year Round</i> Magazine edited by Charles Dickens

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">Ellen Ternan</span> British actress (1839–1914)

Ellen Lawless Ternan, also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for her association with the author Charles Dickens.

<i>The Woman in White</i> (novel) 1860 novel by Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White is Wilkie Collins's fifth published novel, written in 1860 and set from 1849 to 1850. It started its publication on 26 November 1859 and its publication was completed on 25 August 1860. It is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels".

<i>No Name</i> (novel) 1862 novel by Wilkie Collins

No Name is a novel by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1862. Illegitimacy is a major theme of the novel. It was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round before book publication. It is the second of his four 'great novels' after The Woman in White (1860), and before Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868).

<i>The Bondwomans Narrative</i> 19th-century slave narrative by Hannah Crafts

The Bondwoman's Narrative is a novel by Hannah Crafts whose plot revolves around an escape from slavery in North Carolina. The manuscript was not authenticated and properly published until 2002. Scholars believe that the novel was written between 1853 and 1861. It is one of the first novels by an African-American woman, another is the novel Our Nig by Harriet Wilson, published in 1859, while an autobiography from the same time period is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, published in 1861.

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.

This is a list of fictional stories in which illegitimacy features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this article. Many of these stories explore the social pain and exclusion felt by illegitimate "natural children".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgina Hogarth</span> Sister-in-law of Charles Dickens

Georgina Hogarth was the sister-in-law, housekeeper, and adviser of English novelist Charles Dickens and the editor of three volumes of his collected letters after his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Minto Elliot</span> English writer

Frances Minto Elliot (1820–1898) was a prolific English writer, primarily of non-fiction works on the social history of Italy, Spain, and France and travelogues. She also wrote three novels and published art criticism and gossipy, sometimes scandalous, sketches for The Art Journal, Bentley's Miscellany, and The New Monthly Magazine, often under the pseudonym, "Florentia". Largely forgotten now, she was very popular in her day, with multiple re-printings of her books in both Europe and the United States. Elliot had a wide circle of literary friends including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. Collins dedicated his 1872 novel, Poor Miss Finch, to her, and much of the content in Marian Holcolmbe's conversations in The Woman in White is said to be based on her.

<i>Once a Week</i> (magazine) British weekly illustrated literary magazine

Once A Week was a British weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury & Evans from 1859 to 1880. According to John Sutherland, "[h]istorically the magazine's main achievement was to provide an outlet for [an] innovative group of illustrators [in] the 1860s."

Hide and Seek is Wilkie Collins' third published novel, first published on 6 June 1854. It is the first of his novels involving the solution of a mystery, the elements of which are clearer to the reader than to the novel's characters. Suspense is created from the reader's uncertainty as to which characters will find out the truth, when and how.

References

  1. ↑ Dickens, Charles (1857). Household Words. Vol. XV. London: Bradbury and Evans. pp. iii, 12, 565. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
  2. 1 2 Peters, Catherine (1993). The King of Inventors. Princeton University Press.
  3. ↑ Nadel, Ira B (1997). The Dead Secret (Introduction to the Oxford Classic ed.). Oxford University Press.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.