ABSTRACT
Taking everything into consideration, the three books of this author that will live are: The Woman in White, on account of the admirable way in which he manages the bewildering sequence of events; The Moonstone, thanks to the originality of the central idea and the artistic manner in which he works up to the very unexpected climax; and No Name, if only for the sake of that humorous rascal, Captain Wragge…. In spite of all his faults-even because of his faults-he was a great story-teller. At the time when some of the greatest novelists that the world has yet seen were depicting men and women of every conceivable variety and in every conceivable position, he took up his one-sided idea of inventing, first and above all, a good story, and then fitting it with men and women. To this peculiar theory he remained true as steel, in spite of the fashion of the time, and went on constructing his literary labyrinths and giving inexpressible relief to a world surfeited with novels of character. When Dickens and Thackeray were penning their marvellous experiences of human conduct; when George Eliot was analysing the workings of the human mind; when Anthony Trollope was showing his infinite knowledge of human trivialities; when Charles Reade was distributing from his treasure-house of human incidents —obstinate, one-sided old Wilkie was laboriously planning and putting together his secrets and surprises, his letterwriting and his telegraph operating, his strange meetings and his wonderful resemblances, his deaths and his risings from the dead, and proving his right to be considered the Mastes of Constructive Fiction.
