But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate and merciless premeditation that the only defense attempted by her counsel was madness and the only alternative left to a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death."

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Legacy of Cain by Wilkie Collins - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Collins includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily. eBook features: * The complete unabridged text of ‘The Legacy of Cain by Wilkie Collins - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Collins’s works * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

In the midst of a Victorian culture ingrained with strict social etiquette and societal norms, Wilkie Collins composed novels that contained asocial, even anarchic, impulses. A contemporary of Dickens, Collins creates a world more Kafkaesque than Dickensian, a world populated by doppelgangers, secret selves, oddballs, and grotesques. The essays of Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins purposefully work to expand Collins's legacy beyond The Woman in White and The Moonstone; they move well past the simplistic view of Collins's works as "sensation novels," "detective novels," or even "popular fiction," all labels that carry with them pejorative connotations. This collection represents the range of Collins's aesthetic project from various critical perspectives. New methodological and theoretical approaches are applied both to him most popular and to his lesser-known works, giving the reader a broader picture of this multifaceted and undervalued writer The Editors: Maria K. Bachman in an assistant professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Newsletter, Literature and Psychology, The Dickensian, and Dickens Studies Annual. Don Richard Cox is a professor of English and associate dean at the University of Tennessee. His books include Sexuality andVictorian Literature (Tennessee), Arthur Conan Doyle, and Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood: An Annotated Bibliography. He is the coeditor, with Maria Bachman, of an edition of Wilkie Collins's final novel, Blind Love

The Legacy of Cain by Wilkie Collins

A pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins produced masterpieces like ‘The Woman in White’ and ‘The Moonstone’, establishing himself as the master of sensation fiction. Collins perfected the mystery story, producing countless classics that would have a lasting impact on the history of the novel. For the first time in publishing history, this comprehensive eBook presents Collins’ complete works, with numerous illustrations, many rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 5) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Collins’ life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * ALL 24 novels, with individual contents tables * Includes rare novels often missed out of collections * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original Victorian texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Rare tales from periodicals and magazines, appearing here for the first time in digital publishing * Easily locate the short stories you want to read * Includes Collins’ rare plays – available in no other collection * Includes Collins’ non-fiction – spend hours exploring the author’s rare magazine essays and articles * Special biographical section, with essays and biographical pieces evaluating Collins’ literary and private life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels ANTONINA BASIL HIDE AND SEEK A ROGUE’S LIFE THE DEAD SECRET THE WOMAN IN WHITE NO NAME ARMADALE THE MOONSTONE MAN AND WIFE POOR MISS FINCH THE NEW MAGDALEN THE LAW AND THE LADY THE TWO DESTINIES THE HAUNTED HOTEL THE FALLEN LEAVES JEZEBEL’S DAUGHTER THE BLACK ROBE HEART AND SCIENCE “I SAY NO” THE EVIL GENIUS THE GUILTY RIVER THE LEGACY OF CAIN BLIND LOVE The Short Story Collections AFTER DARK THE QUEEN OF HEARTS MISS OR MRS.? AND OTHER STORIES IN OUTLINE THE FROZEN DEEP AND OTHER STORIES LITTLE NOVELS MISCELLANEOUS SHORT STORIES The Short Stories LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER The Plays THE FROZEN DEEP NO THOROUGHFARE BLACK AND WHITE NO NAME THE WOMAN IN WHITE THE NEW MAGDALEN MISS GWILT THE MOONSTONE The Non-Fiction MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM COLLINS ESQ, RA RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS MY MISCELLANIES MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND ARTICLES The Biographies WILKIE COLLINS’ CHARMS by Olive Logan MEN OF MARK: W. WILKIE COLLINS by Edmund Yates WILKIE COLLINS by William Teignmouth Shore Extracts from ‘MEMORIES OF HALF A CENTURY’ by Rudolph Chambers Lehmann Extracts from ‘LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS’ by John Forster Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular novelists during England's Victorian era. While Collins scholarship has often focused on social issues, this critical study explores his formal ingenuity, particularly the novel of testimony constructed from epistolary fiction, trial reports and prose monologue. His innovations in form were later mirrored by Vera Caspary, who adapted The Woman in White three times into contemporary fiction. This text explores how the formal dialogue between Collins and Caspary has linked sensation fiction with noir thrillers and film noir.

In his 1852 novel Basil, Wilkie Collins' narrator concludes that "those ghastly heart-tragedies laid open before me ... are not to be written, but ... are acted and reacted, scene by scene, year by year, in the secret theatre of home." Taking this memorable quote as her starting point, Jenny Bourne Taylor demonstrates how Victorian psychology is central to an understanding of the complexity and vitality of Collins' fiction, exploring the boundaries of mind/body, sanity/madness, and consciousness/unconsciousness. Taylor's depth of research and thoughtful analysis establishes the importance of Collins as a writer whose fiction challenges the cultural constructions of the nineteenth century, and proves "the impossibility of drawing a precise boundary between fictional and psychological codes". Going beyond conventional discussion of the sensation genre, here we see the depth and range of Collins' writing and gain an understanding of its relation to Victorian medical thought. The study includes close readings of five novels: Basil (1852), The Woman in White (1859-60), No Name (1862-3), Armadale (1864-66), and The Moonstone (1868). Consideration is also given to Man and Wife (1870), The New Magdalen (1872), The Law and the Lady (1875), Jezebel's Daughter (1879), Heart and Science (1882-3), The Fallen Leaves (1879), and The Legacy of Cain (1889). CONTENTS Foreword by Andrew Mangham Introduction - Collins as a sensation novelist Chapter 1 - The psychic and the social: Boundaries of identity in nineteenth-century psychology Chapter 2 - Nervous fancies of hypochondriacal bachelors - Basil, and the problems of modern life Chapter 3 - The Woman in White - Resemblance and difference - patience and resolution Chapter 4 - Skins to jump into - Femininity as masquerade in No Name Chapter 5 - Armadale - The sensitive subject as palimpsest Chapter 6 - Lost parcel or hidden soul? Detecting the unconscious in The Moonstone Chapter 7 - Resistless influences - Degeneration and its negation in the later fiction