ABSTRACT
Wilkie Collins was the author of twenty-three novels, seven novellas, fifty-three short stories, several narratives co-written with Dickens and others, and a wide range of articles, many of them appearing anonymously in Dickens’ magazine Household Words, and elsewhere. Collins’ public standing has never matched that of those contemporaries. English literary critics have showed their implicit conservatism by treating him as a minor author, with at best a few popular successes in mystery writing. The ultimate emphasis in this chapter falls on the elements of plot and theme in the rich narratives, and it seeks to identify the overall meaning structures of the stories, features which can themselves be multiple. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
