 First edition title page | |
| Author | Wilkie Collins |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery, Sensation novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1875 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 3 vol. |
The Law and the Lady is a detective story, and sensation novel published in 1875 by Wilkie Collins. It is not quite as sensational in style as The Moonstone and The Woman in White .
Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville despite objections from Woodville's family; this decision worries Valeria's family and friends.
Just a few days after the wedding, various incidents lead Valeria to suspect her husband of hiding a dark secret in his past. She discovers that he has been using a false name, "Woodville", when his true surname is "Macallan". Eustace refuses to discuss it, leading them to curtail their honeymoon and return to London where Valeria learns that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by arsenic. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'not proven' rather than 'not guilty'. This implies that, though the jury believe Eustace to be guilty, it did not have enough proof to convict him.
Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime. In her quest, she comes across the disabled character Miserrimus Dexter, a fascinating but mentally unstable genius, and Dexter's devoted female cousin, Ariel. Dexter will prove crucial to uncovering the disturbing truth behind the mysterious death.
Wilkie Collins explores themes of disability with the character of Miserrimus Dexter, who his depicted as a handsome and highly intelligent dandy despite the loss of his lower limbs. It is his detective genius that brings the narrative to a conclusion. Despite popular perceptions of the disabled in Victorian society, Collins demonstrates that there is no clear divisions between the disabled and the able-bodied. In his decadence, Dexter also embodies the public views of sensation literature. [3]
Elizabeth Woodville, later known as Dame Elizabeth Grey, was Queen of England from 1 May 1464 until 3 October 1470 and from 11 April 1471 until 9 April 1483 as the wife of King Edward IV. She was a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic civil war between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist factions between 1455 and 1487.
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.
The Moonstone: A Romance by Wilkie Collins is an 1868 British epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. Its publication was started on 4 January 1868 and was completed on 8 August 1868. The story was serialised in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round. Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage in 1877.
Crooked House is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1949 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 23 May of the same year.
Phineas Redux is a novel by Anthony Trollope, first published between 1873 and 1874 as a serial in The Graphic. It is the fourth of the "Palliser" series of novels and is a sequel to the second book of the series, Phineas Finn.
The Eustace Diamonds is a novel by Anthony Trollope, first published between 1871 and 1873 as a serial in the Fortnightly Review. It is the third of the "Palliser" series of novels, though the characters of Plantagenet Palliser and his wife Lady Glencora are only in the background.
Lord Edgware Dies is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in September 1933 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of Thirteen at Dinner. Before its book publication, the novel was serialised in six issues of The American Magazine as 13 For Dinner.
The Man in the Brown Suit is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by The Bodley Head on 22 August 1924 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The character Colonel Race is introduced in this novel.
The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in between the early 1860s and mid to late 1890s, centering taboo material shocking to its readers as a means of musing on contemporary social anxieties.
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club on 15 March 1937. In the US, the book was published by Dodd, Mead and Company under the title Dead Man's Mirror in June 1937 with one story missing ; the 1987 Berkeley Books edition of the same title has all four stories. All of the tales feature Hercule Poirot. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the first US edition at $2.00.
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".
The Newgate novels were novels published in England from the late 1820s until the 1840s that glamorised the lives of the criminals they portrayed. Most drew their inspiration from the Newgate Calendar, a biography of famous criminals published during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and usually rearranged or embellished the original tale for melodramatic effect. The novels caused great controversy, and drew criticism in particular from the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who satirised them in several of his novels and attacked the authors openly.
The Wench Is Dead is a historical crime novel by Colin Dexter, the eighth novel in the Inspector Morse series. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award in 1989.
The amateur detective, or sometimes gentleman detective, is a type of fictional character. He has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in the United Kingdom in the Golden Age. The heroes of these adventures are often members of the British gentry or gentlemen by conduct. They are sometimes contrasted with professional police force detectives from the working classes.
The Moonstone is a 1934 American mystery film directed by Reginald Barker and starring David Manners, Phyllis Barry, Gustav von Seyffertitz and Jameson Thomas. It is an adaptation of the 1868 novel The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. The film retains the book's British location, but uses a contemporary 1930s setting rather than the Victorian era of the original. It is one of three film versions of the novel, which include silent versions in 1915 and 1909, although a number of television and radio adaptations have been made.
Patrizia Reggiani is an Italian convicted criminal and former socialite. She was convicted in a highly publicized trial of hiring a hitman to kill her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci.
Who Killed Zebedee? is a short detective story by Wilkie Collins, first published under the alternate title "The Policeman & The Cook" in serial form in 1881. A young wife is convinced that, while sleepwalking, she has murdered her own husband, John Zebedee. Together, a young constable and the cook from the couple's final lodgings attempt to uncover the truth.
Man and Wife is Wilkie Collins's ninth published novel, first published in 1870. It is a sensation novel, and the second of his novels in which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. Collins increasingly used his novels to explore social abuses, which according to critics tends to detract from their qualities as fiction. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married, either before witnesses or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being legally married.
The Moonstone is a daytime drama series produced by King Bert Productions for BBC One. It is an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins 1868 novel of the same name described by T.S. Eliot as the first and greatest of English detective novels. It stars Josh Silver and John Thomson.
Sergeant Richard Cuff is a fictional character in Wilkie Collins' 1868 novel The Moonstone. He represents one of the earliest portrayals of a police detective in an English novel.
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