Product Description

In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the nineteenth century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world. Contemporary reviewers vehemently disapproved of this explicit treatment of adultery; and even today the passionate and lurid atmosphere he creates still has the power to disturb the reader.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93385 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Dorothy Goldman, Deputy Director, School of Continuing Education, University of Kent

Customer Reviews

A fascinating early work by a master!
Wilkie Collins had a long and productive career, producing a number of great "sensation novels", works which brought the horrors and paranoia of gothic fiction into the domestic realm of everyday Victorian England. Perhaps his best, and best-known, are the wonderful 'The Woman in White', which introduced multiple unreliable narrators to fiction, and 'The Moonstone', the first detective novel. 'Basil' is an earlier work (his second published novel), and eschews the mysterious murders and insanities of his later work to concentrate on a (then quite shocking) portrayal of secret adultery. Not as carefully crafted as his more mature masterpieces, 'Basil' is still an absorbing and gripping tale, well worth investigating.

Interesting, but don't expect too much.
'Basil', being one of Collins earlier works, was never going to be as exciting or thrilling as his later novels 'The Woman in White' and 'The Moonstone'. I ventured to expect this when I voluntarily picked this book up to see the roots of the later masterpieces.

'Basil' is the beginning of the mystery thriller that Collins would adopt later on, and the inferiority of his treatment of this genre is easy to see. Whereas in 'The Moonstone' things were difficult to predict, and unable to see where things are going, the signs in 'Basil' are not discreet enough, there are no red herrings, what you read are the glaringly obvious hints that lead the story on and lead you to guess the subsequent events. This makes reading 'Basil' a lot less thrilling to read, and will pale in comparison to what you may have read in TWIW and TM. If you have not read these two novels, and you want to give Collins a try, this is not a good introduction (unless you take the length of the novel into account, which took me a day to read, whilst his later novels take three days). There is too much foreshadowing, and too much of it is made very clear.

'Basil' has a good basic plot, his characters well drawn out, but verging on stereotypical which is demonstrated on Basil's first dream of the two ladies in his life. One is dark, shrouded by wood in shadows, the other is pure and white, illuminated by sunshine and pleasant landscape. This is the basic concept of Margaret, his deceitful wife, and Clara, his virtuous sister. The protagonist can be difficult to like sometimes, his reasoning can be unconvincing, and his actions verge on stupidity, not on behalf of the character, but on behalf of Collins, on creating him. Other drawbacks are seen in the plot holes, and things that just wouldn't make logical sense of any person to act. Such as Robert writing a whole confession on everything he had done, leaving evidence of himself and Margaret to other eyes. On top of that, he chooses to omit certain details of his confession which seems nothing more than a scape goat of Collins as he cannot think of a decent enough argument that might have swayed Margaret to act as she did (though her motives are clumsingly added later on).

This early work has flaws, but it's only a short work, and if you wanted to enlighten yourself of Collins' earlier work, this would be a good place to start as it foreshadows many themes to take hold of later novels, and also seems to have quite a bit of autobiographical detail which can allude to his secret life with his mistresses (the protagonist also has the exact same interest as Collins regarding his career). By all means, pick this book up, it's surely inferior, but it's highly readable and satisfies many curiosities that one may have of the author.

An Early Collins Gem
Basil was only Wilkie Collins second novel written before some of his better known works and so to me was something of a mystery. It is a shorter tale than most of Collins works and looks at the relationships between men and women in the main. The narrator of the tale Basil, who the book is named after, who tells us `the story of an error, innocent in it's beginning, guilty in its progress, fatal in its results'. Now what that tale is I shall not divulge too much as in typical Collins style there are many a twist in this tales... erm... tail ending.

The book opens with Basil (who oddly at the start of the book wants to remain nameless only then through Clara his sister suddenly tells us his name) one day randomly ends up on an omnibus where he is instantly smitten with a young woman. So smitten in fact that not only does he believe that he has experienced `love at first sight' but also follows her to her home. There he learns her name, Margaret Sherwin, and then to his dismay the fact that she is of a family of lower rank than himself and this he knows would be something his father would never allow.

Along with the nurse he soon plots to meet Margaret and then in plotting with her father he organises a secret wedding, however there are conditions and the conditions are they will marry within a week though no one, other than the people are involved, can ever speak of it. It must remain unknown for a year and then Basil can have Margaret to himself. Sounds like there must be something mysterious going on there doesn't it? And of course indeed there is. All seems to be going well at first and then Mr Sherwin's right hand man Mr Mannion appears on the scene (bringing with him a lot of storms, whenever there is a big scene the clouds thunder and the rain storms) and things start to become a little darker.

The characters are wonderful. We have the disapproving feared father, the sweet angelic sister, the dandy brother and that's just Basil's family. Margaret starts sweet and innocent but still waters might run deep, her father is a greedy self obsessed man, her mother a pale frail weeping woman and Mr Mannion is just brilliantly creepy. Don't let those descriptions make you assume that the likely end could come from this synopsis as it isn't the case. A wonderful novel that shows how Collins was honing his skills to create the sensation novels that came later, this early gem shouldn't be missed.