Uilyam Uilki Kollinz

William Wilkie Collins was born on January 8, 1824, in London. He graduated from a private school. He traveled through Europe and lived in Italy. For some time he worked for a firm engaged in tea imports. In 1847, deciding to take up law, he entered Lincoln's Inn; in 1851 he became a barrister.

In 1848 he published his first book, memoirs about his father, a well-known artist who instilled in his sons a love of art and was at the same time a stern moralist. Collins's first novel, Antonina (1850), is of less interest today than Rambles Beyond Railways (1851), notes on a journey through Cornwall.

In 1851 Collins met Dickens and remained his friend for many years. In the 1850s he became close to Caroline Elizabeth Graves, who had a strong influence on him. According to the artist J. E. Millais, Collins's first meeting with Mrs. Graves most likely suggested to him the scene for The Woman in White (1860), his best book; however, the novel was undoubtedly based on a case from French legal practice. The Moonstone (1868) enjoyed no less success; it is one of the first detective-adventure novels with a skillfully constructed plot. It is a mysterious romantic story about the disappearance of a sacred diamond which, like the legendary Koh-i-Noor, brings misfortune to its owners.

Collins's later works are often of a critical tendency. Thus, the novel Man and Wife (1870) is directed against the imperfections of marriage law; The Law and the Lady (1875) against the Scottish verdict of "not proven"; Heart and Science (1883) against the deification of science, which leads, for example, to the practice of vivisection. The heroines of The New Magdalen (1873) and The Fallen Leaves