Hide and Seek & The Fallen Leaves - collins wilkie

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Résumé :
Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins' third published novel. It is the first of his novels involving the solution of a mystery, the elements of which are clearer to the reader than to the novel's characters. Suspense is created from the reader's uncertainty as to which characters will find out the truth, when and how.
The novel has a convoluted plot, in common with many of Collins' works. It falls into two parts:
the history of Madonna Grice

Matthew Grice's discovery of her.

Mary Grice is courted and seduced by a man calling himself Arthur Carr. Carr is called away on business, and his letters to Mary (presumably professing his honourable intentions toward her) are intercepted by Mary's sister Joanna, who considers Carr to be socially inferior to the Grices. Joanna drives the pregnant, unmarried Mary from the family home. Mary gives birth to a daughter and dies miserably, attended only by performers from a travelling circus.
Martha Peckover, wife of one of the clowns, adopts the baby (also Mary) and takes possession of her one heirloom, a bracelet made of Mary Sr.'s & Carr's hair. Mary Jr. becomes a circus performer and is struck deaf and dumb after a riding accident, making her one of several of Collins' characters with severe physical disabilities. She is exploited by the circus owner, and to rescue her Mrs Peckover takes her to the home of a minister, Dr Joyce. There Valentine Blyth, a painter, sees her and himself adopts her. Mary Jr. grows up beautiful and acquires the nickname Madonna for her resemblance to figures of the Virgin Mary in Italian Renaissance painting. She is admired by Valentine's friend Zack Thorpe, a high-spirited but vacuous young man somewhat resembling Allan Armadale in the novel of that name. Zack leaves home after disagreements with his ultra-religious and disciplinarian father.
In a brawl in a disreputable theatre, Zack defends a man who turns out to be Matthew (Mat) Grice, Mary Sr.'s brother, and moves in with him. Mat has spent decades wandering the Americas, but returns home after making his fortune on the California goldfields. Mat's next concern is to find out the fate of his family. He establishes from Joanna that Mary Sr. is dead but her child was born alive. Mat decides to trace the child.

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.