Basil

There's nothing like a bit of sensationalist fiction every now and then. If anyone were an exponent of this genre, then it would be Wilkie Collins. The novel was only his second, but shows much of the technique and approach that rendered The Woman in White and The Moonstone famous. Basil was shocking to many of his Victorian readers in its depiction of adultery and immoral behaviour. The novel loses none of its potency (even if some of its shock value) for a modern reader, given the number of unexpected twists and turns. Sure, it is heavily — perhaps too heavily — reliant on coincidence, but for many parts of Basil, it was not clear what would happen next. The climactic ending — set on a stormy spit of land in remote Cornwall — was reminiscent of Conan Doyle. I also like the epistolatory approach employed by Collins at the novel's close. This seems very modern (even if done by Laclos in Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and created another set of highly surprising reveals. Fiction, per Collins, should not imitate life, but fuse realism and romance. 9/10.

By Wilkie Collins