Overview
This selection of eleven essays charts the most important aspects of the developing debate about Wilkie Collins' fiction in the last twenty years. Employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches—including reader response theory, narratology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, cultural materialism and a range of feminisms—these essays examine Collins' fiction from several perspectives: historical, psychological, structural, generic and political (including gender politics). They focus on an author preoccupied with the production of social and psychological identity, and with issues of class, gender and power. If there is a single issue which permeates this collection, it is the question of the subversiveness of Collins' fiction or, alternatively, its retreat from and/or containment of a radical social critique or subversive impulses. The pros and cons of this debate are explored further in Lyn Pykett's detailed and wide-ranging introduction.