Author: Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins, (1824 -1889). Born in London, son of the landscape painter William Collins, he was named after his father's friend Sir David Wilkie. Educated privately, with generous interruptions for travel abroad, he entered Lincoln's Inn in 1846 but quickly showed the real direction of his interests in literature. His ill health was aggravated by addiction to laudanum; and his unconventional private life become further entangled, with two mistresses, Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd, apparently sharing his house.
