PDF Books in Psychological Fiction
The Black Robe
by Wilkie CollinsWilkie Collins’s 1881 The Black Robe tells the story of the misadventures of Lewis Romayne in a novel which deals with depression, madness, a fatal duel, marital breakdown, capture by South American ‘natives’, ill-motivated religious conversion, bigamy and disinheritance. The somewhat mad premise is that scheming Jesuit Father Branwell is out to wi..
The Evil Genius - A Domestic Story
by Wilkie CollinsCollins' most financially successful novel, The Evil Genius, opens with a jury determining the fate of a sea captain whose ship allegedly facilitated a diamond theft. The story develops into a powerful novel of Victorian private life, including deception, adultery and divorce. The story was ahead of its time in presenting both the wife and the..
The Fallen Leaves
by Wilkie CollinsThe Fallen Leaves of the title are 'The people who have drawn blanks in the lottery of life...the friendless and the lonely, the wounded and the lost'. The novel was not well received and a planned Second Series, showing an unconventional marriage failing because of outside pressures, was never written.The novel follows the fortunes of four w..
The Guilty River
by Wilkie CollinsThe Guilty River isn’t concerned with the supernatural, but with heredity. It is a mystery which betrays a certain fear of characteristic inheritance. Collins was not alone in this exploration. Like organic memory, heredity was a subject written about in literary and scientific circles alike, and at times the two were in direct conversation. Thomas..
Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time
by Wilkie CollinsHeart and Science, one of Wilkie Collins’ later novels, is concerned with the debate over what he termed ‘the hideous secrets of vivisection.’ The tale of a family split by various opinions and sentiments, as well as the novel’s clear parallels to the animal welfare/animal rights debates of today will strike chords of understanding with modern read..
Hide and Seek
by Wilkie CollinsHide and Seek was Wilkie Collins' third published novel. It is the first of his novels involving the solution of a mystery, the elements of which are clearer to the reader than to the novel's characters. Suspense is created from the reader's uncertainty as to which characters will find out the truth, when and how. ..
No Name
by Wilkie CollinsNo Name is a novel by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1862. Illegitimacy is a major theme of the novel. It was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round before book publication. The story is told in eight major parts, called Scenes.Scene One begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somerset, the country residence of the..
Poor Miss Finch
by Wilkie CollinsPoor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins is a novel about a young blind woman who temporarily regains her sight while finding herself in a romantic triangle with two brothers. Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Prato..