Since 1995, studies of Wilkie Collins have erupted following a century or more of quiet. The year 1998 witnessed the publication of Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide (Gasson, 1998). A year later witnessed the first publication of Collins' earliest novel written nearly 150 years earlier in an edition edited and introduced by Ira B. Nadel. Curiously, Ioláni, or, Tahiti as it Was receives scant attention in the volume edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor. In 1995 Wilkie Collins to the Forefront: Some Reassessments (Smith and Terry, 1995) was published. It consists of 15 essays originally presented at the Wilkie Collins Centennial Conference held by the University of Victoria, British Columbia, from September 29 to October 1, 1989. In 2003, the University of Tennessee Press published Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins (Bachman and Cox, 2003). This has 14 contributors on various aspects of Collins oeuvre and aims to deliberately expand Collins' afterlife beyond The Woman in White and The Moonstone.
In the meantime, primary materials continue to emerge. These include a six volume edition of Wilkie Collins letters published between 1999 and 2005, and a reconstruction of his library (Baker, 2002) (RR 2003/194). There are two outstanding biographies, The King of Inventors (Peters, 1993) and William M. Clarke (the husband of Wilkie's great‐granddaughter) The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins (Clarke, 1996). So the Introduction and 13 essays in Jenny Bourne Taylor's volume rework some familiar territory. There are very welcome contributions to neglected areas. John Bowen writes well on Collins's Shorter Fiction. Bowen appositely observes that “Wilkie Collins was adept at exploiting the narrative possibilities that the growth of magazine and periodical publishing in the nineteenth century created” (p. 37). Jim Davies' Collins and the Theatre is a succinct account of Collins' fascination with the theatre and his attempts to earn a good deal of money by writing a London hit. Rachel Malik's The Afterlife of Wilkie Collins encompasses a good deal in a short space, including brief discussion of television and other adaptations. Interestingly for Malik, “Collins proved a rich resource for early films” (p. 183), an observation unfortunately insufficiently developed.
Tim Dollin writes interestingly on Collins's Career and the Visual Arts, perhaps confining himself too much to the early fiction. Jenny Bourne Taylor's succinct and well‐written Introduction correctly observes that the “essays illustrate the extraordinary range of approaches that can be brought to bear on Collins's work” (p. 6). A notable omission is any substantial discussion, other than a passing mention, of Collins's late fascinating novel The Black Robe (1881) with its exposure of corruption in religious circles in high places. There are references to the recently published letters, but no assessment of their style or importance for our understanding of their writer, his friendships, public and private relationships. Some contributions go over all too familiar territory. An essay for instance on Collins and Empire is largely but not exclusively confined to The Moonstone and does not add to anything that previously has not been said on the topic.
The volume concludes with a useful Further Reading listing helpfully divided into Primary Sources and Reference Materials, Biography, Books and Edited Collections on Wilkie Collins, Essays, Articles, General and Websites – some evaluation of these would have been helpful. There are two interesting illustrations. The Index is helpful and reasonably comprehensive, but with some omission and curious inclusions. All‐in‐all another most useful volume in the Cambridge Companion to Literature series for addition to the humanities reference shelves.
