Synopsis "The Guilty River"

The Guilty River is a sensation novel that was written by Wilkie Collins. The action centers around a young man who returns to England to collect his inheritance after the death of his father. While on an evening walk he meets an old childhood friend which sets off a bizarre chain of events. Wilkie Collins was a prominent English writer in the 19th century. Collins was a close friend of Charles Dickens and his books were often featured in Dickens' journals All the Year Round and Household Words. Collins' books still enjoy wide popularity, especially mystery and detective novels such as The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and Armadale.

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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