Synopsis "The Evil Genius"

Wilkie Collins' novel The Evil Genius is first published in the year 1886. He highlights various social and family issues like class stigma, religion, remarriage, child custody, heritance right, divorce and infidelity in this novel. In the beginning of the story, Captain Roderick Westerfield faced a trial of diamond theft and insurance fraud. His wife left her daughter Sydeny with her aunt and moves to States with her son. After distressing childhood and youth Sydney Westerfield becomes the governess of pretty Kitty, daughter of Herbert and Catherine Linely. Story takes a turn when Sydney and Herbert fall in love, situations become crucial, Sydney leaves the house but due to illness of Kitty she comes back. Seeing the adversity Catherine leaves Herbert and asks for divorce. But things are not easy for her because society behaves differently to a divorced woman and her child. Meanwhile Captain Bennydeck meets Catherine feeling love for her, he wants to marry her but when he came to know about her divorce he withdraws his proposal. In the end Sydney left Herbert, Kitty unites Catherine and Herbert. Sydeny becomes Bennydeck's secretary and hopefully his life partner.

Wilkie Collins

(Author)

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(London 1824-1889) Playwright, novelist, and prolific short story writer. At 17, he started working at a tea trading company while writing Ioláni, or Tahiti as it was (Gothic no. 32), a work that was not published until over a century after his death. He studied Law and, although he never practiced, he did use his legal knowledge in many of his works, and critics consider him one of the fathers of the detective genre. In 1851, he met Charles Dickens, with whom he formed a deep friendship and published his main works in his weekly All the Year Around. After Dickens' death in 1870, his popularity waned. He suffered from rheumatic gout which eventually led to an opium addiction. His tombstone epitaph highlights him as the author of the novel The Woman in White.

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