The Dead Alive
Wilkie Collins author Anna Clark editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Broadview Press Ltd
Published:30th Dec '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
In this 1874 novella, the celebrated British writer of sensation fiction tells the tale of two brothers sentenced to be executed for having committed a murder that never occurred, and of the efforts of the energetic Naomi Colebrook to ferret out the truth and save the two innocents. As editor Anna Clarke observes, Collins' work is both a compelling legal sensation thriller and an important transatlantic commentary on American life. Along with the text itself and an illuminating introduction, Clarke provides a range of background materials-including documents from the real-life Boorn murder trial that inspired the novella-in order to set the work in its historical context.
“This is a timely re-examination of Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Alive. Anna Clark has situated Collins’s novella within its nineteenth-century context in terms of the Boorn murder trial, which inspired its plot, and other contemporary materials, including reviews and illustrations. The introduction provides a clear overview of Collins’s work, as well as of the text under consideration, which makes this volume useful for both scholars and students. This is a welcome and exciting addition to Broadview’s indispensable Victorian literature series.” — Joanne Ella Parsons, Falmouth University
“Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Alive is an incredibly teachable novella, and Anna Clark’s introduction helpfully situates it within a range of historical contexts. This little-known text—advertised as Collins’s ‘first American story’ and based on an actual 1819 Vermont trial—is distinct within Collins’s oeuvre. The bold Naomi Colebrook prefigures Collins’s detective-heroine Valeria Woodville in The Law and the Lady but is also depicted as a uniquely American heroine. The contextual material that Clark provides, including reviews and reports of the real-life trial, position The Dead Alive as a significant experiment in transatlantic, legal, and sensational writing.” — Tara MacDonald, University of Idaho
ISBN: 9781554814336
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 7mm
Weight: 168g
120 pages