Wilkie Collins. Book 4

Wilkie Collins. Book 4: 1. Armadale; 2. The Legacy of Cain; 3. Blind Love.


1. Armadale

Armadale (1866) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century semi-epistolary novel. Some chapters consist of letters between the various characters, while other chapters record the events as the characters perceive them.

The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. Many years are skipped over. The son, mistreated at home, runs away from his mother and stepfather, and takes up a wandering life under the assumed name of Ozias Midwinter. He becomes a companion to the other Allan Armadale, who throughout the novel never discovers the relationship. But Ozias is constantly haunted by feeling that he might harm Allan, first after he reads the letter left for him, and then again after they spend the night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man--the ship turning out to be the same on which the old murder took place (the murderer locked his victim in a cabin as the boat filled with water). On the boat, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters. This dream fills Ozias with foreboding, its three scenes becoming fulfilled in the course of the novel.


2. The Legacy of Cain

Collins is often overlooked as a comic writer, but Legacy of Cain (1889) shows him at his best, with several scenes causing me to snort indecorously on the train.  The subtle humour leavens a novel dealing with the thorny issue of criminality and genetics, which could have become ponderous in less skilled hands.

Novel dedicated to Mrs Henry Powell Bartley (Carrie Graves) acknowledging her skill and patience in copying manuscripts for the printer.  Henry Bartley was Collin's solicitor and, ironically, embezzled from the estate - the fate suffered by Miss Jillgall in the story.  Published in 1888, it was the final novel completed by Collins and the last to be syndicated by Tillotson.  The Legacy of Cain explores the theme of hereditary evil, and attacks the idea that 'bad blood' necessarily results in a criminality.


3. Blind Love

Blind Love is Wilkie Collin's final novel. Although he did not live to complete the work, he left detailed plans for the last third of this novel which were faithfully executed by his colleague, the popular author Sir Walter Besant. The novel is set during the Irish Land War of the early 1880s and tells the story of Iris Henley, an independent young woman who marries the "wild" Lord Harry Norland, a member of an Irish secret society, and becomes unhappily drawn into a conspiracy plot.