Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), English author and master of the detective novel wrote numerous essays, short stories, more than a dozen plays, and published twenty-three novels including The Woman in White (1860).

Collins' father William John Thomas Collins (1788–1847) was a well-known landscape artist, producing over 200 major works and whose patrons included King George IV, aristocrats and members of the clergy. William became a full member of the Royal Academy in 1820. [William] Wilkie Collins was born on 8 January 1824 at 11 New Cavendish Street, St Marylebone, England, and was baptised on 10 February at the parish church of St Mary-Le-Bone, an area of London where he would live for most of his life. His mother Harriet (1790–1868) was a daughter of Captain Alexander Geddes of Alderbury.