I'm a huge Wilkie Collins fan, so perhaps I'd prefer a hagiography. I felt like this work was rather colorless, given the humor and talent possessed by its subject. I got the feeling the writer did not appreciate Collins position as an innovator in mystery and thought of him as more of a second fiddle to Dickens. He gave pages to his later works and their shortcomings, but really failed to communicate just what a ruckus woman in white and moonstone caused when they came out. He was pleased to have some detail about the two household Collins maintained, but really just engaged in a lot of speculation about them. That may be all that is possible, but it failed to satisfy me ( )

Wilkie Collins was at the centre of artistic and intellectual Victorian life so this biography gives a detailed account of all the major characters of the time, most notably Collins' closest friend, Charles Dickens. While he was not as great a writer as Dickens, his life was every bit as interesting and even more unconventional. Most famously, he maintained nearby households in London with two different women neither of whom he married. Wilkie Collins was a free thinker - a strong supporter of women's rights, anti-organised religion, anti-royalist
and also a pacifist.
One of the aspects of Victorian life that comes out is the frequent poor health and early death, even of the upper and middle classes. Wilkie Collins suffered from a range of ailments for most of his life, especially gout and syphilis. All the illnesses led to a colossal intake of drugs, mostly laudanum and opium.
This biography is mostly fascinating - the subtitle, A Life of Sensation, referring both to the sub-genre of Victorian novels in which Wilkie Collins was a leader - the 'sensation' novels - and to the sensationalism of his own lifestyle. The most tedious part is all the detail of the numerous publishing deals and copyright arguments that he was engaged in. I would also warn any reader coming to this biography before reading the novels that the plots of most of them are given away and, if you haven't yet read his most famous novel, 'The Moonstone', then the various twists and the denouement are given revealed. ( )