John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism is published.

1864 On a summer trip to Yarmouth, Collins meets Martha Rudd, who will become another longtime lover. Armadale is serialized in the Cornhill Magazine. The Contagious Diseases Act, which allows police to perform arbitrary strip-searches of prostitutes, is passed.
1866 Collins’s play The Frozen Deep is performed at the Olympic Theatre. Armadale is published in book form.
1867 Dickens and Collins collaborate on the play No Thoroughfare. Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” is published. The British Parliament passes the Second Reform Bill, doubling the number of eligible voters by reducing the property qualification.
1868 The Moonstone, the first detective story in English, is serialized in All the Year Round and then published in book form by William Tinsley. Dickens grows increasingly intolerant of Collins’s unconventional romantic life. Perhaps out of jealously over his
relationship with Martha Rudd, Caroline marries another man.
1869 Black and White opens at the Adelphi Theatre. Marian, Collins’s daughter with Martha Rudd, is born. Martha Rudd uses the name “Dawson,” and all of her and Collins’s children are surnamed Dawson. Man and Wife is serialized in Cassell’s Magazine.
1870 Charles Dickens dies. Man and Wife is published in book form.
1871 Caroline Graves returns to live with Collins. He keeps a separate establishment for Martha Rudd. Another daughter, Harriet, is born to Collins and Martha. The Woman in White appears at the Olympic Theatre. Labor Unions are legalized in Britain. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is published.
1872 The New Magdalen is serialized in Temple Bar magazine.
1873 Collins embarks on a reading tour of the United States; he meets Mark Twain and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The New Magdalen is published in book form.
1874 Collins’s son with Rudd, William Charles Collins Dawson, is born. The Law and the Lady is serialized in The Graphic.
1875 The Public Health Act is passed in Britain. The Law and the Lady is published in book form.
1877 The Dead Secret appears at the Lyceum Theatre in London. The Moonstone is staged at the Olympic Theatre.
1878 The Haunted Hotel is serialized. London’s first telephone service is implemented.
1879 The Haunted Hotel is published in book form and Jezebel’s Daughter is serialized.
1880 Jezebel’s Daughter is published in book form and The Black Robe is serialized.
1881 The Black Robe is published in book form.
1882 Heart and Science is serialized in the Manchester Weekly Times and Belgravia Magazine.
1883 Heart and Science is published in book form.
1884 Collins becomes a founding member of the Society of Authors. “I Say No” is serialized and published in book form.
1885 The Evil Genius is serialized.
1886 The Evil Genius is published in book form. British Prime Minister Gladstone introduces a bill for Irish Home Rule.
1887 Little Novels, an anthology of short stories, is published. Arthur
Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.
1888 The Legacy of Cain is published in serial and book form. Jack the Ripper begins killing women in London.
1889 After years of serious illness and laudanum addiction, Wilkie Collins suffers a stroke in June. He dies on September 23.
1895 Caroline Graves dies and is buried alongside Collins.
1919 Martha Rudd dies.
1999 Collins’s first, previously rejected novel, Iólani, is published.

INTRODUCTION

The opening line of Wilkie Collins’s enormously popular novel The Woman in White is one of the more confrontational in narrative history: “This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.” It is a statement of mystery as well as a challenge. Pausing here, a reader is likely to wonder about what trials await this poor woman and to speculate on what constitutes her relationship to this resolute man. Is he the cause of her travails, or is he her rescuer? Why must she be forced to endure what one presumes can be only cruelties? And why must she so patiently withstand them at all, rather than fight back herself? Even beyond these contemplations, what are we to make of an author who begins his tale this way? Does he enjoy seeing women suffer, for example? And more important, to what sadistic ends will our own attention be put?

A more famous set of lines preceded this opener on the same page of its first serial installment, and when one contrasts these sentences, Collins’s abruptness and somewhat harsh tone become even more unsettling. The Woman in White appeared first in serial form in Charles Dickens’s weekly publication All the Year Round, from November 26, 1859, to August 25, 1860 (and simultaneously in the United States in Harper’s Weekly, from November 25, 1859.