Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation

Acclaimed biographer Andrew Lycett uncovers a few skeletons in Wilkie Collins’s closet, revealing a private life every bit as sensational as anything the author dreamt up in his fiction. * Observer *
Clean outlines, crystal clear English, and a clear-eyed picture of his subject... Andrew Lycett’s a terrific narrator... the Hemingway of biographers… One sees Collins more clearly having read Lycett… A fine, and pre-eminently useful, biography of the most elusive character in Victorian literature. -- John Sutherland * The Spectator *
Collins’s private life... was as rich in secrets as his books. Sensible, thoughtful and never less than scrupulous, ­Lycett is just the right biographer to assess whether such potentially sensational material should affect our interpretation of ­Collins’s work. * Sunday Times *
As delicate as it is thorough, Lycett peels away the layers of deception with which Collins protected himself and shows us the engagingly vulnerable figure beneath * Evening Standard *
Excellent on Collins's friendship with Dickens, which he presents, convincingly, as much more of a relationship of equals than Dickens's biographers allow * The Times *
Fascinating … a well-researched and even-handed biography that shines a perceptive light on one of our great Victorian novelists * Daily Mail *
[An] admirable biography... The friendship between Dickens and Collins – both men with “skeletons in the closet” in terms of their domestic arrangements – is one of the highlights * Scotland on Sunday *
In his engrossing book, Andrew Lycett intimately connects the complex domestic life of the 19th-century English novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins with his writing career and celebrated contribution to sensational fiction ... By revisiting and revealing new sources, Lycett interweaves a fascinating family history, complex friendships, intriguing correspondences ... to take the reader on a sensational tour of Wilkie's unconventional life ... Lycett demonstrates a fascinating complexity to his relationship with women that invites further exploration ... highly readable and entertaining. * BBC History Magazine *
Lycett paints a vivid picture of Collins . . . [his] lucid biography unpicks the contradictions at the heart of Wilkie Collins's character. * Observer *
Measured and informative... [with] some entertaining anecdotes along the way * Mail on Sunday *