Collins
Collins names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Collins WILLIAM WILKIE, an English novelist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM WILKIE, an English novelist; born in London, Jan. 8, 1824. He was educated at a private WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS school. After a short time in the teatrade he studied law at Lincoln's Inn. He wrote a biography of his father in 1848 and made literature his profession, 5-Vol. III-Cyc His first novel was "Antonina" (1850); "Rambles Beyond Railways" follow. In 1852 he returned to fiction with "Basil," and "Mr. Wray's Cash Box," "Hide and Seek" followed in 1854. In "Household Words," "After Dark" and one of his most successful works, "The Dead Secret," were originally published. Several of his novels, including "The Woman in White" and "No Name," were published originally in "All the Year Round." "Armadale" and many of his subsequent stories were printed in American magazines before appearing in book-form. "The Moonstone," "Man and Wife," "The New Magdalen," and "The Law and the Lady" are other works of his that had wide circulation. His principal books have been translated into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, and Russian. He died in London, September, 1889.
Collins JOHN CHURTON, an English educator and writer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN CHURTON, an English educator and writer, born in 1848. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1872. For many years he con tributed book reviews and criticisms to the English reviews. In 1904 he was appointed professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham. He edited many editions of English classics and wrote "Sir Joshua Reynolds as a Portrait Painter" (1874); "Study of English Literature" (1891); "Essays and Studies" (1895); "Essays in Poetry and Criticism" (1905); and "Rousseau and Voltaire" (1908). He died in 1908.
Collins WILLIAM, an English poet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM, an English poet; born in Chichester, Dec. 25, 1721. His melancholy temperament and poetic musings marked him as a boy, and at Oxford. "The Passions," the "Ode to Evening," the "Dirge in Cymbeline," and the "Ode on the Death of Thomson," chiefly perpetuate his fame. He died in a madhouse at Chichester, June 12, 1759.
Collins WILLIAM, an English painter
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM, an English painter; born in London, Sept. 8, 1788; father of William Wilkie Collins. His most popular works are: "Happy as a King," "The Stray Kitten," "Putting Salt on the Bird's Tail," and "The Newly Found Nest." He died in London, Feb. 17, 1847.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 listed Wilkie Collins as a popular novelist whose books "had wide circulation" — a fair summary of a writer then thought a second-rank contemporary of Dickens. That judgment has been overturned: T. S. Eliot's 1927 essay called "The Moonstone" "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels," and Collins is now routinely taught as a founder of detective and sensation fiction, with "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone" in print continuously and adapted repeatedly for film and television. The other three have held their places roughly as described: the poet William Collins (1721-59) is still valued for the "Ode to Evening," though modern biographers place his death at his sister's house in Chichester rather than in a madhouse, after an earlier confinement in an asylum. John Churton Collins, once a combative reviewer and Birmingham's first professor of English literature, is now remembered chiefly as a footnote in the history of English as a university subject.
Written for this edition, 2026.