Armadale - Collins, Wilkie

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Résumé :
Armadale by Wilkie Collins is a classic sensation novel that weaves a complex web of mystery, identity, and fate. The story centers on two men, both named Allan Armadale, whose lives become intertwined through a dark secret from the past. When Lydia Gwilt, a manipulative and enigmatic woman, enters their lives, her schemes threaten to bring tragedy upon them. Filled with suspense, intricate plot twists, and richly drawn characters, Collins' novel explores themes of destiny, moral ambiguity, and the consequences of buried secrets....

Biographie:
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's works appeared first in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words and they collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s, but began suffering from gout. Taking opium for the pain grew into an addiction. In the 1870s and 1880s his writing quality declined with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between Caroline Graves and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.
Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, London, the son of a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes. Named after his father, he swiftly became known by his middle name, which honoured his godfather, David Wilkie. The family moved to Pond Street, Hampstead, in 1826. In 1828 Collins's brother Charles Allston Collins was born. Between 1829 and 1830, the Collins family moved twice, first to Hampstead Square and then to Porchester Terrace, Bayswater.[1] Wilkie and Charles received their early education from their mother at home. The Collins family were deeply religious, and Collins's mother enforced strict church attendance on her sons, which Wilkie disliked.[2]
In 1835, Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy. From 1836 to 1838, he lived with his parents in Italy and France, which made a great impression on him. He learned Italian while the family was in Italy and began learning French, in which he would eventually become fluent.[3] From 1838 to 1840, he attended the Reverend Cole's private boarding school in Highbury, where he was bullied by a boy who would force Collins to tell him a story before allowing him to go to sleep. It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware.... When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure,...

Sommaire:
Armadale by Wilkie Collins is a classic sensation novel that weaves a complex web of mystery, identity, and fate. The story centers on two men, both named Allan Armadale, whose lives become intertwined through a dark secret from the past. When Lydia Gwilt, a manipulative and enigmatic woman, enters their lives, her schemes threaten to bring tragedy upon them. Filled with suspense, intricate plot twists, and richly drawn characters, Collins' novel explores themes of destiny, moral ambiguity, and the consequences of buried secrets....