| As Bachman and Cox emphasise
in their introduction, Collins always in some sense saw
himself as a realist in the complex sense of that term as
being both rooted in and "beyond"
sense experience. But his practice was also shaped by his
aesthetic and economic contexts, and the first and last of
these essays illuminate how he moved across and between
different cultural circles as a bohemian artist and a
commercial writer at the different stages of his career.
Tim Dolin and Lucy Dougan unpick how closely Basil
corresponds to and extends the Pre-Raphaelites'
ambivalence towards modernity; while Graham Law offers a
nuanced discussion of the connections between the form of
Collins's late narratives and the expanding national and
international literary market place that he both depended
on and at some level despised. Law's analysis of Collins's
uneasy position in late nineteenth century publishing
practices offers a useful corrective to those who want to
read him, always, as a dangerous radical, and Reality's
Dark Light still leaves much to explore in Collins's
oeuvre. But it is great to have this new collection, which
will help place Collins, perverse or not, at the centre of
the dynamics of Victorian culture. Jenny Bourne Taylor, Sussex University Review in Wilkie Collins Society Journal 7 (2004) 59-61 |