"The Girl at the Gate" was one of the most popular works of its time. It was published in New York in December 1884 before its January 1885 appearance in "The English Illustrated Magazine." It was explicitly written for this special December 27, 1884 "Christmas Spirit" issue of The Spirit of the Times, The American Gentleman's Newspaper. This story is also considered one of the first modern English detective novels. Here, one can find all the elements typical for a novel: a love triangle, a mysterious illness, and poisoned medicine.

A collection of strange stories from Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. It also includes the novella, The Haunted Hotel, a combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of waterways and death.

Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular writers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for The Woman in White, which inaugurated the sensation novel in the 1860s, and The Moonstone, one of the first detective novels; but he wrote over 20 novels, plays and short stories during a career that spanned four decades. This Companion offers a fascinating overview of Collins's writing. In a wide range of essays by leading scholars, it traces the development of his career, his position as a writer and his complex relation to contemporary cultural movements and debates. Collins's exploration of the tensions which lay beneath Victorian society is analysed through a variety of critical approaches. A chronology and guide to further reading are provided, making this book an indispensable guide for all those interested in Wilkie Collins and his work.

The "Sensation Novel" ushered in the modern mystery genre. It was inaugurated by Wilkie Collins's best-seller The Woman in White in 1860. But this collection, selected by Peter Haining, reveals that Collins had actually been writing realistic stories of suspense for at least a decade before this. With dramatic plots that revolved around hidden secrets, bloody crimes, villainous schemes, and clever detective work all occurring in everyday settings, Wilkie Collins helped to shape a new genre that was worlds away from anything being written by his contemporaries--and one that was to have a far-reaching influence. Sensation Stories ranges from Collins's earliest tales and those published under the auspices of his great friend Charles Dickens to the title piece from his last, melancholic collection. Among several famous yarns and stories not published for over a hundred years is one featuring a pioneer female detective and another that has been called the first British detective story. There is a ghost story controversial for its eroticism, the first humorous or satirical detective story and a story that clearly presages The Woman in White, published two years later. Thrilling reads in their own right, all 10 stories showcase Wilkie Collins's towering contribution to the development of the mystery genre. Indeed, he is now regarded as the inventor of the modern detective story and the forefather of a crime fiction tradition that runs through Arthur Conan Doyle to Thomas Harris today.