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Article: Wilkie Collins' Victorian Sensation
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 3, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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NO NAME By Wilkie Collins (1862)
LATE IN LIFE Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), a chronic sufferer from
gout, became addicted to laudanum (tincture of opium), one of the
Victorians' favorite anodynes. Like many a drug taken in excess,
laudanum produces hallucinations, and Collins' naturally febrile
imagination saw to it that his figments were doozies. "For example,"
writes Professor J.I.M. Stewart, "when he was going to bed, he used
to meet at the turn of the stair a green woman with tusk teeth and
the displeasing habit of biting a piece out of his shoulder."
Although nothing so hideous as the hungry green woman appears in
Collins' fiction, he wrote four great, sensation-filled novels: The
Woman ...