William Holman Hunt's deathbed portrait of Collins and John Everett Millais's portrait of him as a young man.
Biographical Material
Discussions
Preliminary Drawings for Illustrations
Cover for Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and sketches for illustrating it: By virtue of the artistic collaboration between Dickens and Wilkie Collins in the 1850s, the younger Collins became a member of Dickens's circle, and later, on his marriage to Kate (Catherine Elizabeth Macready) Dickens (1839-1929) in July 1860, his son-in-law. Kate (1839-1929) had married the handsome artist in July 1860 at Gadshill to escape a difficult household and a controlling father, perhaps not realising that Collins was gay. Dickens admired his son-in-law's work as an artist, and asked him to illustrate this late, unfinished novel. Apparently these sketches are as far as Collins got in the project when his health failed him, and the commission then passed to another young artist, Luke Fildes. Upon Collins's death from cancer in 1873, Kate married another artist, Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918), and quite by coincidence died shortly after the discovery of these sketches. — Philip V. Allingham
- Draft of the cover
- Cover as published
- The dinner party with guests in full evening dress
- The piano recital in the Rev. Crisparkle's home in Minor Canon Row, with Jasper at the instrument
- The Dean of the Cathedral and a gentleman's servant
- Datchery or the Bishop and Mayor Sapsea (?)
- In Princess Puffer's Opium Den Jasper draws back the curtain
- Jasper in the opium den
Work in other media
Bibliography
William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1905.
Lehmann-Hauptmann, C.F. “New Facts Concerning 'Edwin Drood'.” The Dickensian. (1929): 165-175.
Last modified 13 September 2024