9 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2019
    1. The English intellect is sound, so far as it goes,” he continued, seating himself at the table; ” but it has one grave defect—it is always cautious in the wrong place.”

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to these lines in a series of excerpts about Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. When an English jury has to choose between a plain fact, on the surface, and a long explanation under the surface, it always takes the fact, in preference to the explanation.

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to this sentence in a series of excerpts about Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to this sentence in a series of excerpts about Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. Men little know, when they say hard things to us, how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to these lines in a series of excerpts about Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    2. Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money; but they cannot resist a man’s tongue, when he knows how to talk to them.[

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to this sentence in a series of excerpts about Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to this final sentence in a series of excerpts used to illustrate Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but, I think, the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good humour. A fat, well-fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr. Merriman was one of this class.

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to these lines in a series of excerpts used to illustrate Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

    1. When two members of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet

      The September 8, 1860 Literary Gazette review of The Woman in White calls attention to these lines in a series of excerpts used to illustrate Wilkie Collins's style and characterization.

  2. Apr 2019
    1. 5 May 1860

      The day before this installment hit the shelves, the Hull Packet and East Riding Times (a periodical published in a town in Yorkshire, England) weighed in on Collins's use of letters and found documents in his novel:

      In All the Year Round, Mr Wilkie Collins, whose Antonina made him suddenly famous, is continuing his most exciting story of “The Woman in White” Usually novels composed of extracts from the letters and diaries of the characters moving in the story, are failures: and to this rule Sir Walter Scott’s Red Gauntlet, even, is no exception. Mr Wilkie Collins, is, however, a great artist in the mechanical development of a story, and, therefore, in spite of the continued extracts from “Miss Halcombe’s diary,” and “Walter Hartright’s journal,” and “Miss Michelson’s narrative,” “The Woman in White,” holds the reader in breathless suspense, and we venture to say that the thousands might be multiplied by many tens who, week after week, and month after month, feel it one of their pressing anxieties to know through what new tribulations Mr. Wilkie Collins’s imaginary heroines will have to pass. In other articles in All the Year Round too much of the mannerism which characterized the papers in Household Words is apparent. Mr. Dickens’s own papers “The Journeys of the Uncommercial Traveller,” are interesting enough, but the imitation of Mr Dickens’s style in the same periodical are often sadly dull and wearisome.

      "Literature." Hull Packet and East Riding Times [Hull, England] 4 May 1860: n.p. 19th Century British Newspapers. 7 Apr. 2015.