W Turner paints Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway, in a style that is a distinct contrast to William Collins’s landscapes.

1845 Iólani; or Tahiti as It Was, a Romance, Collins’s first attempt at a novel, is rejected by publishers Chapman and Hall. Frederick Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England is published.
1846 Collins studies law at Lincoln’s Inn. The failure of the potato crop in Ireland leads to widespread famine.
1847 Wilkie’s father, William Collins, dies, and Wilkie begins work on his biography. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is published. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights appears.
1848 Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A. is published. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton: A Tale of a Manchester Life appears. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is published. Revolutions break out all over the Continent.
1849 Collins’s painting The Smuggler’s Retreat is exhibited at the Royal Academy. He and Charles Ward again visit France.
1850 A Court Duel, Collins’s first play (an adaptation of J. P. Simon and Edmond Badon’s Monsieur Lockray), is performed in London. His first novel, Antonina; or, the Fall of Rome, is published.
1851 A travel book, Rambles Beyond Railways, is published. Collins meets Charles Dickens when the two play roles in a London theatrical production. The Great Exhibition of new technology is held at the Crystal Palace in London. Mr. Wray’s Cash-Box is published.
1852 Collins’s “A Terribly Strange Bed” appears, his first story to be published in Dickens’s magazine Household Words. Basil: A Story of Modern Life is published by Bentley Press. Dickens’s Bleak House is published.
1853 Collins suffers an attack of the rheumatism that will plague him in later years. He recovers and tours Switzerland and Italy with Dickens and Augustus Egg.
1854 Hide and Seek is published.
1855 Dickens’s Tavistock House theater produces Collins’s first play, The Lighthouse.
1856 After Dark, Collins’s first book of short stories, is published. A Rogue’s Life is serialized in Household Words. At Dickens’s invitation, Collins joins the staff of the magazine. Collins continues to experience bouts of illness.
1857 Household Words begins serialization of The Dead Secret; it is published
in book form later in the year. The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act is passed.
1858 Collins’s play The Red Vial opens at the Olympic Theatre but is not successful.
1859 Collins meets and moves in with Caroline Graves, a widow. In November, Dickens’s new magazine All the Year Round begins to publish installments of The Woman in White, which gains widespread popularity. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published.
1860 Collins’s brother marries Kate, Charles Dickens’s daughter. In August, The Woman in White is published in book form by Sampson Low. The best-selling novel makes Collins one of Britain’s most popular writers.
1861 Collins is elected to the Athenaeum, a club that includes such illustrious members as Charles Darwin and Robert Browning.
1862 No Name is serialized and published in book form. In response to increasingly ill health, Collins begins taking the pain killer laudanum.
1863 Collins travels to Italy, France, and the Isle of Man with Caroline. My Miscellanies, an anthology of journalism, appears.