The Aachen Memorandum

Wilkie Collins is a sharp and insightful biography from Peter Ackroyd’s "Brief Lives" series, focusing on the unconventional life of the man who pioneered the sensation novel and the detective story. Ackroyd explores the restless spirit of the author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, detailing his lifelong struggle with illness, his addiction to laudanum, and his complicated domestic life involving two "wives" and two separate families.

The book highlights how Collins’s rebellious nature and fascination with the macabre allowed him to subvert Victorian social norms through his writing. Ackroyd masterfully connects Collins’s personal eccentricities to his literary genius, showing how his obsession with secrets and identity transformed him into one of the most popular and influential storytellers of the nineteenth century.