Synopsis "The Guilty River"

Gerard Roylake returns from Germany on the death of his father to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. On his first evening he walks to the nearby River Loke, "the ugliest, muddiest stream in England" which runs at the back of an old mill, inhabited by the miller. The miller has a beautiful daughter, whom Gerard recognises as his childhood friend, Cristel Toller. He also meets a deaf man living at the mill known as the Lodger, who is almost insane with jealousy if any one notices the miller's daughter. As fondness between gerard and Cristel grows, the Lodger's jealousy takes an evil turn and pushes him to take drastic steps.

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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