 | |
| Author | Wilkie Collins |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Epistolary, Mystery Novel, Sensation novel |
| Publisher | All the Year Round |
Publication date | 1881 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Preceded by | Jezebel's Daughter (1880) |
| Followed by | Heart and Science (1883) |
The Black Robe is an 1881 partially-epistolary novel by famed English writer, Wilkie Collins. The book, which relates the misadventures of one "Lewis Romayne", is noted for its anti-Catholic lens.
As the story begins, Romayne and his friend, Major Hynd, are in Boulogne to visit Romayne's aunt, who is dying. While there, Romayne attends a card game, where he has an argument with a corrupt card sharp, the General, who challenges him to a duel. However, the general doesn't turn up himself but nominates his son, an accurate shot, who should win the duel. Romayne absolutely does not want to fight but is goaded into doing so. Against the odds, he accidentally kills his opponent, and the screams of the man's brother after the death come to haunt Romayne for the rest of his life.
Romayne returns to his Yorkshire home, called Vange Abbey. Even in his own home, the Frenchman's younger brother's awful cries follow him. He finally leaves for London, to visit his old friend Lord Loring, who is the patriarch of a well-heeled Catholic family. While there, he meets Stella Eyrecourt, who falls in love with him. A Catholic priest named Father Benwell, who serves as a spiritual leader for the Lorings, determines that he will convert Romayne to the church, employing the services of young priest, Arthur Penrose, to this end. This is all done in an attempt to bring Romayne's family home, Vange, back to the church, who owned it before Romayne's family.
Romayne, who is still haunted by the duel, sends Major Hynd to enquire about the family of the man he killed in hopes of assisting them monetarily. Additionally, he confides in Penrose who becomes a true friend to Romayne, despite his presumed ulterior motives.
Father Benwell employs various tactics to undermine Romayne's marriage to Stella, finally culminating in the revelation of Stella's prior bigamous marriage to Bernard Winterfield. Winterfield had fallen in love with Stella and married her while erroneously believing that his wife from a previous marriage was dead.
Eventually, Romayne is promoted to an ecclesiastical post in Paris. However, knowing that he is dying, Romayne finally decides to see Stella and his son. Father Benwell brings Romayne's lawyer to his deathbed, trying to confirm the validity of the will in an attempt to ensure the church inherits Vange. But as he dies, Romayne acknowledges he loves his wife and child, and has the will destroyed. This causes Vange—and the entire inheritance—to pass to his family, foiling Benwell's plans. [1]
The structure of the book took on a different form than Collins' more well-known novels such as The Moonstone and The Woman in White. The latter novels used a form in which the narrative of the story is dispersed across many narrators. In The Black Robe, Collins chose to use a series of "scenes" to organize the novel coherently. While it is unclear why he chose to divert so radically from a previously successful structure, he had also done this in a previous novel, No Name . [2]
Writing for The Spectator , E. A. Collins, who was herself a minor novelist, gave the novel a generally unfavorable review. However oddly enough, she recommended the novel for its "readability." The same reviewer complained of an "unnaturalness" present in the book, and a lack of development of significant characters. [3]
In writing the book, Collins has been accused of perpetuating an anti-Catholic bias common in the late 19th century. [4] Collins himself may have helped fuel this belief, as he wrote to the Canadian Publisher of The Black Robe, regarding the Jesuits, "We must do all that we can to keep these 'black-robed gentlemen' within due limits." [5]
The Black Robe public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
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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.
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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.
Thomas Anstey Guthrie was an English author, most noted for his comic novel Vice Versa about a boarding-school boy and his father exchanging identities. His reputation was confirmed by The Tinted Venus and many humorous parodies in Punch magazine.
Black robe, blackrobe or variant may refer to:
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".
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John Elbert Wilkie was an American journalist and Chief of the United States Secret Service from 1898 to 1911.
Blind Love was an unfinished novel by Wilkie Collins, which he left behind on his death in 1889. It was completed by historian and novelist Sir Walter Besant.
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.
Catherine Elizabeth Macready Perugini was an English painter of the Victorian era and the daughter of Catherine Dickens and Charles Dickens.
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.
Lorien Legacies is a series of young adult science fiction books, written by James Frey, Jobie Hughes, and formerly, Greg Boose, under the collective pseudonym Pittacus Lore.
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.
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Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins' third published novel. 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.
Chivalry of a Failed Knight is a Japanese light novel series written by Riku Misora and illustrated by Won. The story is set in a fantasy world where the titular "failed knight" Ikki Kurogane meets Stella Vermillion, who is considered a prodigy. The two make up for each other's weaknesses and form a relationship while training to become great knights. The first volume was released on July 15, 2013. An anime adaptation aired in late 2015.
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