"This volume traces the events of the life of a major Victorian writer, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) and provides a full account of his daily, monthly, and yearly activities. The chronology reveals the extensive canvas of Wilkie Collins's interaction with other famous figures, including Dickens, Thackeray, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Newly available correspondence reveals the extent of Collins's unorthodox attitudes : his private life was divided between two women, one of whom was the mother of his three children, and neither of whom he married. A replete creative life is exposed here in everyday detail."--Jacket.