Wilkie Collinsa Brief Life Peter Ackroyd by Peter Ackroyd 9780385537391, 9780385537407, 0385537395, 0385537409 instant download after payment.

A gripping short biography of the extraordinary Wilkie Collins, author of "The Moonstone" and "The Woman in White," two early masterpieces of mystery and detection. Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely near-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colorful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was nonetheless a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women--and avidly read by generations of readers. Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, "the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists," from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his lifelong friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, "The Moonstone"--often called the first true detective novel--and the sensational "The Woman in White," he produced an intriguing array of lesser known works. Told with Ackroyd's inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humor and sympathetic understanding.