No Name (Penguin Classics)

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Two dispossessed sisters fight for their inheritance, the narrative snaking compellingly around Victorian Britain."— Sunday Times Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

b) Take a cabriolet to King's Cross and consort her saucy wares in that notorious environs, become the reknowned consort of the vile and famous, and conclude by wielding unfathomable power behind the scenes in the highest circles, enabling her to reach down and crush the evil estranged brother like an ant? When the American woman dies, Andrew and Mrs Vanstone hurriedly depart for London to get married. This would appear to regularise the status of the two daughters, but technically they remain illegitimate – because their father and mother were not married at the time of their birth. No Name is the second of the four novels generally thought to be Collins's best, and I quite agree with general opinion. The plot centers on two sisters, Magdalen and Norah Vanstone, who find out that when their parents die that they weren't married at the times of the sisters' births, making them illegitimate; thus, they are disinherited by law and cast out from their childhood home by their estranged uncle. Norah submits to her fate and finds work as a governess, but Magdalen vows revenge and embarks on a series of plots to regain their inheritance. Please don't expect ACTUAL murdering going on or selling herself on the streets or anything LEWD like a close-up description of the skin texture of a frog.The plot is complex and centres around a series of situations in which one character is trying to persuade another. It takes time and skill until the desired effect is achieved, but success there is each time round. Even if to the 21st century eye the persuasion seems almost implausible, it is all fascinating, reads like a (slightly old-fashioned) thriller. There are also parallels with our own century where people seem to want to believe what they are told although a bystander would immediately recognise a scam for what it is. There are heroes and villains, as there are in many of his works as well. I really thought that Magdalen was a complex character who definitely goes against many of the Victorian conventions of her time (which is why some critics of Collins time rejected this novel). Unlike many of the other minor characters, she definitely has a character arc and there is a complexity to her, perhaps more so than any other character. Two other characters who come into play and are key to the plot are Captain Wragge (self-proclaimed scoundrel and scandalized member of the Vanstone family) and Mrs. Lecount, a faithful—and shrewd—governess for Noel Vanstone. Magdalen teams up with Wragge with her pursuits in mind, and probably the most entertaining essence of this novel is the chess match and battle of wits between Captain Wragge and Lecount as they try to outmaneuver each other in various ways through the course of so many shenanigans and deceptions. III. The old Admiral and George Bertram discuss his marriage prospects. The Admiral objects to Norah because of her connection with the disgraced Magdalen. George agrees to spend a week at the home of a suitable alternative to test his resolve. Magdalen Vanstone – the heroine; a headstrong young woman with dramatic talent, who is determined to regain her family's lost inheritance; aged 18 at the opening of the novel

of laudanum, she also persuades him that Magdalen planned to poison him. Noel alters his will, leaving the fortune to a cousin, Admiral Bartram, Tra i personaggi minori come non ricordare: l'affascinante e generoso capitano Kirke, l'eccentrico ammiraglio Bartram e il suo fedele timoniere Mazey, lo sciocco e fannullone Frank Clare Jr., suo padre, lo scorbutico e filosofico mr Clare, e ancora la fedele e amorevole miss Garth, il risoluto e gentiluomo mr George Bartram.

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Dizzyingly readable, with a feminist anti-heroine up to all sorts of deception and skulduggery, cheered along by the reader every step of the way."— Mail on Sunday The Woman in White was serialised in All the Year Round from November 1859 to August 1860 to great success. The novel was published in book form soon after and reached an eighth edition by November 1860. His rising success as a writer allowed Collins to resign his post with All the Year Round in 1862 and focus on his novels. While planning his next novel, No Name, he continued to suffer from gout, which began to affect his eyes. Serial publication of No Name began in early 1862 and finished in 1863. By that time Collins was having difficulty controlling the amount of laudanum he was taking for his continual gout and became addicted. [15] Magdalen, in particular, is a very unusual Victorian heroine, the likes of which I’ve not encountered before, and which made me long to re-read Gissing’s The Odd Women. Magdalen’s tenacious desire to regain the fortune that is rightfully hers and her sister’s makes up the bulk of No Names’s plot, which journeys all over England and sees some of the finest and most delicious villains which only Collins can make sympathetic rogues and anti-heroes. While there is some high melodrama—what sensation novel doesn’t have melodrama?—I think it was used quite convincingly and deliberately here, less intrusive or annoyingly so than in some of the minor works of, say, Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood. I. When Magdalen arrives in York to see Huxstable, she is intercepted by the rogue Captain Wragge, who preys on her vulnerability to divert and (virtually) abduct her. He persuades her to hide from detection in his lodgings. I. Magdalen is at a low ebb, feeling that everyone is against her. She asks her servant Louisa for help.

Deirdre David, The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 179. Collins criticised the institution of marriage: he split his time between widow Caroline Graves – living with her for most of his life, treating her daughter as his – and the younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children. Scene Two is set in York, where Magdalen is found by Captain Wragge, a distant relative of her mother's, who confesses that he is a professional swindler. He helps her in getting started on the stage in return for a share of the proceeds. His wife Matilda, whom he married for an expected inheritance, is physically huge and kindly but mentally slow; she has to be supervised like a child. II. Magdalen encounters the distressed and confused Mrs Wragge. The Captain defends his occupation as a swindler and offers to ‘help’ Magdalen.This novel has an amazing set of characters, some true villains, both male and female, and the plot is full of twists and turns, that kept me on the edge of my seat. At least for some of the time. The novel has its flaws IMO, namely the many details and repetitions of various legal documents. They became a bit tedious and I lost interest from time to time, which is why I'm only giving the novel 3 stars. Norah and Magdalen are the daughters of Andrew Vanstone, who is the owner of a country estate in Coombe-Raven, Somerset. But unknown to them (and everyone else) they are both illegitimate children. This is because Vanstone as a much younger man married an American woman who was paid off by his family. He has been living with the woman who is mother to the two sisters, but doing so in an unmarried state. VII. Next day Norah reproaches Magdalen for her developing relationship with Frank Clare. They quarrel, and Magdalen is unable to effect a reconciliation. In 1868, Collins met Martha Rudd in Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, and the two began a liaison. She was 19 years old and from a large, poor family. A few years later, she moved to London to be closer to him. Their daughter Marian was born in 1869; their second daughter, Harriet Constance, in 1871; and their son, William Charles, in 1874. When he was with Martha, Collins assumed the name William Dawson, and she and their children used the last name of Dawson themselves.