The classics never fade away.
They may fall out of fashion.
They may go underground. They may obtain cult status. But the classics—whether they are poetry, novels, memoirs or plays—are always with us.
After all, themes of love and hate, betrayal and loyalty, greed and generousity are as relevant today as they were when Homer, Shakespeare and Doyle wrote about them.
Wilkie Collins is back in play, and his "rediscovery" is quite welcomed.
For many, Collins is best known as the author of The Woman in White, published in 1860, and as a close friend and sometimes rival of Charles Dickens.
Collins's works were classified as "sensation novels," a wonderfully Victorian term for what is now regarded as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.
But like Dickens' work, the "sensation" of Collins' novels was that he wrote eloquently about the plight of women and about social and domestic issues of his time.
Take The Women in White in which two men plot to steal a woman's fortune and her identity. Greed and identity theft are modern day issues and, apparently, also problems of the 19th century.
"The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?"
—Walter Hartright, The Woman in White, 1861, by Wilkie Collins
Nicci French, whose latest novel is Blue Monday, recently wrote an essay about The Woman in White for Mystery Scene.
"The Woman in White is the first great psychological thriller, based not just on violence and murder but on the slipperiness of identity and the perception that in our ordinary lives we are skating on thin ice and beneath is madness, disorder, and tumbling strangeness. Anyone who writes - or reads - psychological thrillers owes a great debt to Wilkie Collins," writes French.
In the newly released novel Cloudland by Joseph Olshan, Wilkie Collins' novels are an important part of the clues to find a serial killer stalking a small Vermont town.
Catherine Winslow, a former investigative journalist who now writes a household hints column, is pulled into the investigation because she found one of the victims. Catherine is articulate and well-read who was dismissed from her position as an adjunct professor.
The story—and I am not giving away any plot secrets—takes an interesting turn when the characters search for a lost copy of Collins' The Widower's Branch.
Olshan's Cloudland is a crash course in Wilkie Collins, wrapped in a thrilling contemporay mystery.
Olshan isn't the only author who has focused on Collins during the past few years.
Collins appears as the fictional narrator of Dan Simmons' 2009 novel Drood, which partly is based on Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Collins also is a fictional character in Wanting, a 2008 historical novel by Richard Flanagan.
A.B. Emrys' Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel credits Collins with inventing a new form of mystery, the casebook or novel in testimony, or, as most us call them, police procedurals.
And Collins' work is featured in the collection of Victorian short stories, The Dead Witness edited by Michael Sims.
