RANCE, NICHOLAS, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, Macmillan, 1991.
ROBINSON, KENNETH, Wilkie Collins: a Biography, Davis-Poynter, 1951; reprinted 1974. This was the standard biography until William Clarke's more inward revelations about Collins' private life: includes discussion of the novels.
Wilkie Collins Society Journal and Wilkie Collins Society Newsletter, ed. Kirk H. Beetz, 1981 onwards.
CHRONOLOGY.
DATE AUTHOR'S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT 1824 Born at 11 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, 9 January. Walter Scott: Redgauntlet.
1826 Family moves to Hampstead.
1828.
1829.
1830 Family moves to Bayswater. Cobbett: Rural Rides.
1831 Peacock: Crotchet Castle.
1832 Tennyson: Poems.
1833 Carlyle: Sartor Resartus.
1834 Ainsworth: Rookwood.
1835 Pupil at Maida Hill Academy to 1836.
1836 From September for two years, family tour of France and Italy. Dickens: Sketches by Boz and Pickwick Papers.
1837 Carlyle: The French Revolution.
Dickens: Oliver Twist.
1838 Family move to 20 Avenue Road, Regent's Park. Pupil at Mr Cole's private boarding school in Highbury.
1839 Darwin: Voyage of the Beagle.
Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby.
Carlyle: Chartism.
1841 Apprenticed to Antrobus & Co., tea merchants, in the Strand. Carlyle: Heroes and Hero-Worship.
1843 First publication (August), 'The Last Stage Coachman', in The Illuminated Magazine. Carlyle: Past and Present.
Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit.
1845 Disraeli: Sybil.
1846 Law student (May) at Lincoln's Inn. Edward Lear: Book of Nonsense.
1847 C. Bronte Jane Eyre.
E. Bronte Wuthering Heights.
Thackeray: Vanity Fair.
HISTORICAL EVENTS.
Repeal of Combination Acts.
Wellington becomes Prime Minister. Corn Law (sliding scale).
Peel's police force in London. Catholic Emancipation.
Fall of Wellington government. Grey becomes Prime Minister. July Revolution in Paris. Manchester and Liverpool railway.
Burning of Bristol in Reform demonstrations.
Faraday's electromagnetic current.
Reform Act.
Factory Act. Abolition of slavery. Keble's Assize Sermon.
New Poor Law. Houses of Parliament burnt. Melbourne becomes Prime Minister.
Whigs dismissed; Peel becomes Prime Minister.
Fox Talbot's first photograph. Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Whigs return; Melbourne becomes Prime Minister. Municipal Reform Act.
Accession of Queen Victoria.
London and Birmingham railway. People's Charter.
Anti-Corn-Law League. Bedchamber Plot. Penny Postage Act. Chartist National Convention.
Fall of Whig government. Peel becomes Prime Minister.
Rebecca riots.
Railway mania. Potato failure in Ireland.
Potato famine. Repeal of Corn Laws. Russell becomes Prime Minister.
Daily News.
Chloroform first used.
Franklin expedition.
DATE AUTHOR'S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT 1848 First published book (November), Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, R. A. Dickens: Dombey and Son.
Mrs Gaskell: Mary Barton.
1849 Exhibits painting at Royal Academy summer exhibition. Dickens: David Copperfield.
Clough: Amours de Voyage.
1850 First published novel (February), Antonina. Tennyson: In Memoriam.
Clough: Dipsychus.
1851 Meets Dickens for first time (March); and (May) acts with Dickens in Bulwer Lytton's Not So Bad As We Seem. Ruskin: The Stones of Venice.