Hide and Seek by Wilkie Collins (9780486242118)

Description - Hide and Seek by Wilkie Collins

Dickens, Swinburne, and Macaulay all lavished praise on Hide and Seek, the third of Wilkie Collins' novels (1854) and his first attempt at a mystery. In a letter to his sister-in-law, Dickens remarked: ""I think it far and away the cleverest novel I have ever seen written by a new hand .... In short, I call it a very remarkable book."" In this early effort, we find Collins - considered English fiction's first detective novelist - experimenting with the detective story and honing the skills of narrative and plot construction brought to such a high level in his later masterpieces, The Woman in White and The Moonstone.Besides its mystery-story elements, Hide and Seek succeeds as a warm, entertaining tale that blends domestic comedy, pathos, humor, and a smattering of social protest. It also enabled Collins to introduce a gallery of memorable characters: Mary Grice (nicknamed Madonna), the gentle deaf-mute whose mysterious origins and tragic early life form the basis of the novel; the engaging and voluble Zach Thorpe, of whom Mary is enamored; her guardian Valentine Blyth - a failure as an artist but a success as a human being - and Matthew Marksman, the strange and wild woodsman who finally unravels the shocking story of Mary's true origins.Hide and Seek is a distinct departure from the lurid melodrama of Collins' second novel, Basil, and a milestone in the author's progress toward maturity as a novelist. In its pages readers will find the ingenious plot construction and storytelling skill that Collins felt to be the true calling of the novelist.Admirers of Wilkie Collins - and Victorian fiction in general - will savour the novel's vivid descriptions of exciting events, its sustained power of imaginative suggestion, and the author's shrewd and compassionate depiction of Victorian manners and morals.

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