A woman in white. Moon rock. Collins William Wilki

The book included two novels of the English writer and playwright William Wilki Collins (1824–1889) - “Woman in White” and “Moonstone”, who, according to critics, became the peak of his work. The novel “Woman in White”, written in 1859 and first published in 1860, is one of the first detectives in the world and one of the first (and the best)-sensations; It is based on a fascinating story about a gloomy crime, the secret of which is hidden behind the image of a mysterious woman dressed in a white dress. The “Moonstone”, according to the American-British poet, playwright and literary critic T. S. Eliot, “The very first, longest and best detective novel in English literature.” Written in 1866, it became a source of inspiration and an inexhaustible storehouse of literary techniques for Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and other outstanding masters of the detective genre. A limited circle of people suspected of committing a crime, an insightful professional detective, an unexpected denouement, realistic, psychologically accurate description of Victorian society, dramatic conflicts, elements of exotic, mental abnormalities of heroes, colorful images of the main and secondary characters - all this you will find in the novels of U.. William Wilki Collins, a close friend and co -author of Charles Dickens, a lawyer by education, was familiar with the laws and criminal world of modern England and critically treated morals and unshakable provisions adopted in society. His works have a pronounced critical orientation, which has also become a kind of innovation. In the novel “Woman in White”, the writer, among other things, directly raises the question of the non -rights of men and women in the field of English marriage law, the wide possibilities of abuse of unscrupulous husbands and relatives; In the novel “Moonstone” indicates unsightly stereotypes, of which the characters, typical representatives of the Victorian era, simply do not notice. In Russian (without indicating translators), the novels “Woman in White” and “Moonstone” were published in our country in 1860 and 1868, that is, almost immediately after the publication in the original language. It was these translations that entered the book, which is formed by drawings (without indicating artists) taken from the American literary and political magazine Harper’s Weekly.