A ROGUE'S LIFE

Wilkie COLLINS (1824-1889), elder son of the landscape painter William Collins. He was educated at private schools in London, but gained his real education on a two-year tour of Italy with his family (1836-38). He worked briefly for a tea importer and was later called to the bar, but never practised. His first book, a biography of his father, was published in 1848, and he later wrote numerous articles and short stories for Dickens´s periodicals "Household Words" and "All the Year Round" and...