Wilkie Collins

Heart and Science (eBook, ePUB)

A Story of the Present Time

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Heart and Science turns on the fate of the orphaned Carmina Graywell, who is left in the charge of her aunt and guardian Mrs. Gallilee when her fiancé is forced to take an extended trip to Canada's drier climes in order to recover his health. Over the issue of her inheritance Mrs. Gallilee schemes to manipulate, control and ultimately destroy the naïve but strong-willed Carmina. The story is complicated by the machinations of Dr. Benjulia, a dark genius whose passionate devotion to the study of diseases of the brain leads him to encourage the progress of Carmina's life-threatening brain illness for the sake of scientific observation; the narrative builds to a pair of spectacularly lurid climactic scenes. Collin's novel tackles the debate over what he termed 'the hideous secrets of Vivisection' with a passionate intensity aroused in large part by the sensational 1880s case of a doctor who was acquitted on charges laid under the new Cruelty to Animals Act of having practiced live experimentation on animals without a license. Excerpts from a contemporary account of this trial, together with other documents relating to the vivisectionist controversy and a variety of contemporary reviews of the book, are included among the appendices of this volume. The edition also includes a full introduction, chronology, explanatory notes and a note on the text. Heart and Science's story of the struggle between strong-willed women will strike chords of sympathetic understanding with modern readers?as will its vivisectionist theme, with it's clear parallels to the animal welfare/ animal rights debates of today.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Simon + Schuster LLC
• Seitenzahl: 377
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. März 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781609774738
• Artikelnr.: 49180846

Autorenporträt

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which has been proposed as the first modern English detective novel. Born to the London painter William Collins and his wife, he moved with them to Italy when he was twelve, living there and in France for two years, learning both Italian and French. He worked initially as a tea merchant. After Antonina, his first novel, appeared in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some of his work appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round. They also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but became addicted to the opium he took for his gout, so that his health and writing quality declined in the 1870s and 1880s.