Synopsis "Armadale"

Armadale (1866) is an imaginative novel of 19th century by Wilkie Collins, dedicated to John Forster. This novel featuring a stunningly wicked female villain was regarded by T.S.Eliot as 'the best of his romances'. It consists of an introduction and notes by John Sutherland. This is the story of Alan Armadale. 'Armadale' is a long Victorian classic from the golden age of exciting fiction. It denotes a detailed interest in human psychology with dreams arising at many points in the book. The story comprises two generations of the Armadale families and the complicated plot combines several themes, including the supernatural, identity, murder and detection. The villain of this novel is Lydia Gwylt, a beautiful wicked governess, who is a adulterer, murderer, and drug addict, who creates a web of fraud in order to execute Allan's death. Character of Lydia makes this book so valuable. Armadale from beginning to end is a sensational labyrinth of uncertainties. As an appendix to this story Collins shares an anecdote with reference to The Dream that figures generally in the novel.

Wilkie Collins

(Author)

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(London 1824-1889) Playwright, novelist, and prolific short story writer. At 17, he started working at a tea trading company while writing Ioláni, or Tahiti as it was (Gothic no. 32), a work that was not published until over a century after his death. He studied Law and, although he never practiced, he did use his legal knowledge in many of his works, and critics consider him one of the fathers of the detective genre. In 1851, he met Charles Dickens, with whom he formed a deep friendship and published his main works in his weekly All the Year Around. After Dickens' death in 1870, his popularity waned. He suffered from rheumatic gout which eventually led to an opium addiction. His tombstone epitaph highlights him as the author of the novel The Woman in White.

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