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Elective English—III

Notes which but for him I might never have been aware...When I left school I continued story telling
for my own pleasure”, Collins later said.
In 1840, the family moved to 85 Oxford Terrace, Bayswater. In late 1840, he left school and was
apprenticed as a clerk to the firm of tea merchants Antrobus & Co, owned by a friend of Wilkie’s
father. He disliked his clerical work, but remained employed with the company for more than
five years. Collins’s first story “The Last Stage Coachman” was published in the Illuminated
Magazine in August 1843. In 1844, he travelled to Paris with Charles Ward. That same year he
wrote his first novel, Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance. In 1845, Iolani was submitted to
Chapman and Hall, but it was rejected. The novel went unpublished during his lifetime. Collins
said of the novel: “My youthful imagination ran riot among the noble savages, in scenes which
caused the respectable British publisher to declare that it was impossible to put his name on the
title page of such a novel.” It was during the writing of this novel that Collins’s father first
learned that his assumptions that Wilkie would follow him in becoming a painter were mistaken.

William Collins had intended for Wilkie to be a clergyman, and was disappointed in his son’s
lack of interest in such a career. In 1846, he instead entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law on the
initiative of his father who wanted him to have a steady income. Wilkie only showed a slight
interest in his law studies, and most of his time with friends and in working on his second novel
Antonina, or the Fall of Rome. After his father’s death in 1847, Collins produced his first published
book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A., published in 1848. The family moved
to 38 Blandford Square soon after, where they used their drawing room for amateur theatricals.
In 1849, Collins exhibited a painting, “The Smugglers’ Retreat”, at the Royal Academy summer
exhibition. Richard Bentley published Antonina in February, 1850. Collins went on a walking
tour of Cornwall with artist Henry Brandling in July and August 1850. Collins managed to
complete his legal studies, and finally called to the bar in 1851. Though he never formally
practiced law, he used his legal knowledge in many of his novels.

9.1.2 Early Writing Career

An instrumental event in Collins’s career occurred in March 1851, when a mutual friend introduced
him to Charles Dickens, the painter Augustus Egg. They became lifelong friends and collaborators.
In May of that year, Collins acted with Dickens in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play Not So Bad as We
Seem. Among the audience was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Collins’s story “A Terribly
Strange Bed,” his first contribution to Household Words, appeared in April 1852. In May 1852,
he went on tour with Dickens’s company of amateur actors, again performing Not So Bad as
We Seem, but with a more substantial role. Bentley published Collins’s novel Basil in November.
During the writing of Hide and Seek, in early 1853, Collins suffered what was likely his first
attack of gout, which plagued him for the rest of his life. He was ill from April until early July.
He stayed with Dickens in Boulogne from July to September 1853, afterwards touring Switzerland
and Italy with Dickens and Augustus Egg from October to December. Collins published Hide and
Seek in June 1854.
During this period, Collins extended the variety of his writing, publishing articles in George
Henry Lewes’s paper The Leader, short stories and essays for Bentley’s Miscellany, dramatic
criticism, and the travel book Rambles Beyond Railways. Dickens’s theatrical company at
Tavistock House performed his first play, The Lighthouse in 1855. Smith, Elder in February
1856, published his first collection of short stories, After Dark. His novel A Rogue’s Life was
serialised in Household Words in March 1856. Around this time, Collins began using laudanum
to treat his gout. He became addicted to it, an addiction he struggled with later in life.
He joined the staff of Household Words in October 1856. In 1856-1857, he collaborated closely
with Dickens on the play The Frozen Deep, first performed at Tavistock. Collins’s novel
The Dead Secret was serialised in Household Words from January to June 1857 and published in

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