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The Dead Secret
Paperback
Mystery & ThrillerClassic FictionLiterary Fiction
ISBN13: 9781636375724
Publisher: Bibliotech Pr
Published: Nov 11 2022
Pages: 282
Weight: 0.92
Height: 0.64 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Dead Secret was Wilkie Collins's fourth published novel.
Like its predecessor Hide and Seek, the secret and the mystery are made clear to the reader, though not to the novel's characters, at an early stage.
The obsessed and arguably deranged Sarah prefigures the character of Hester Dethridge in Collins's Man and Wife, and more distantly those of Lydia Gwilt in Armadale and the female protagonist of his late novel, The Haunted Hotel.
The blind Leonard is another of Collins's disabled characters. He plays only a small part in the novel, but Collins drew another and more significant blind character in Lucilla, the heroine of his 1872 novel Poor Miss Finch.
Much of the novel is set in Cornwall, one of Collins's favourite English counties, which also features in his early melodrama Basil.
Contemporary critics held mixed opinions, some seeing an advance on Collins's previous Hide and Seek, and some less enthusiastic. Peters regards the handling of the secret as a weakness in construction, and does not rate the novel highly within Collins's oeuvre. Nadel's description of it as the last of Collins's apprentice novels emphasises the gap between it and Collins's next novel, the acclaimed The Woman in White. Nevertheless it has proved enduringly popular and remains in print. (wikipedia.org)
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