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Title	:	Basil
Author	:	Wilkie Collins
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Oxford World's Classics
Pages	:	Pages: 400 pages
Published	:	March 30th 2000 by Oxford University Press (first published 1852)
Categories	:	Classics. Fiction. Historical. Victorian. Mystery. Literature. 19th Century

Basil

Wilkie Collins

Paperback | Pages: 400 pages

Rating: 3.71 | 1882 Users | 111 Reviews

Rendition In Favor Of Books Basil

I am now about to relate the story of an error, innocent in its beginning, guilty in its progress, fatal in its results …

All hail serendipity! I did not know of the existence of Wilkie Collins’s novel Basil until a few days ago, when I finished reading William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, and saw Collins’s novel cited as analogous to Godwin’s in respect of its subject matter. That prompted me to follow it up, and I’m very glad I did.

The only works by Wilkie Collins I had read before are his great novels of the 1860s: The Woman in White, Armadale, No Name, and The Moonstone, all superb. Basil is early—it dates from 1852—and I can’t say it is as good as the later works. You can see all the same elements here, but they haven’t yet shaken down and resolved themselves into a harmonious composite; there is something jarring and excessive about this piece. On the other hand, I found Basil intriguing precisely on account of its unresolved quality. There’s something wild and weird about it that appealed to me, despite its flaws.

One thing I like very much about Collins’s later novels is his way with women characters, whom I find far superior to those of his mate Dickens. I found Basil disappointing in this regard. The two main female characters here, Basil’s angelic, desexualized sister Clara and his more equivocal love interest Margaret, are fairly stereotypical and stereotypically treated, even down to their contrasted colouring—Clara the pale and blushing English rose, Margaret ominously foreign in her dark and sultry looks. Enough already! Much more interesting, in terms of gender, is Collins’s experimentation with a male protagonist at the extreme of femininity. If you were to total up Basil’s and Clara’s various moments of paleness, faintness, and general vapourousness throughout the novel, it would be a very close call.

What I found mainly appealing in Basil is its odd combination of realism and social observation with a much stranger, Romantic and Gothic streak. This mixture is all the more striking because the Gothic emerges out of the realist and prosaic; we spend the first half of the novel in an entirely different world to that of the second. The first is a novel of social observation, set in an intriguingly transitional London, where ancient landed aristocratic families pursue their elegant lives in select squares, while nouveau riche tradesmen throw up flashy villas on the outskirts of the city, and dangerous novelties such as horsedrawn omnibuses bring the different strata of society into fatal juxtaposition. The second half of the novel, increasingly melodramatic, jolts us into a world of full-on romanticism, complete with dream-visions, foul fiends, fated revenge pursuits (the thematic tie-up with Caleb Williams), and numerous bouts of madness, illness, and violence. It’s all a bit chaotic and feverish, but no one could accuse it of being predictable. And since the novel’s shift in tone coincides with a catastrophe in the life of the protagonist, and we are seeing his life through his eyes, it can perhaps lay claim to a certain psychological realism.

Basil is sometimes described as the first Victorian ‘sensation novel’, as I have discovered reading up on it since I finished the novel (there’s a very good 2000 article available free online, http://wilkiecollinssociety.org/resur..., and I also looked at the 2013 The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction). I hadn’t really registered the sensation novel as a phenomenon before, but it seems useful as a way of making sense of the transition between Romanticism and the mature traditions of Victorian fiction. Perhaps that is ultimately what I like about this early example of the genre. You can see literary history here in the making, and with something still rather molten in the mix.

Declare Books Supposing Basil

Original Title:	Basil
ISBN:	0192835483 (ISBN13: 9780192835482)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Containing Books Basil

Ratings: 3.71 From 1882 Users | 111 Reviews

Criticism Containing Books Basil

A fascinating creation with very few characters and, for the major part of the book, only a very small canvas. The narrative is well paced and varied, pulling together memoir, journal and letters. The narrative gains in menace as it progresses, sitting comfortably on the shelf with Frankenstein and other gothic novels - although the reader may not suspect this to be the case for some chapters.

Wilkie Collins is one of the most underrated writers of the Victorian period. His The Woman in White was an outright masterpiece; The Moonstone was good, if a bit overlong. I enjoyed Basil, his second novel, despite all the high melodrama.Basil (no last name given) is the younger son of a British M.P., in the good graces of his family as the elder son Ralph is a bit of a scapegrace. But then Basil commits the ultimate crime by falling in love with a draper's daughter. The father insists on a

Basil is, for me, one of the lesser known books written by English author, Wilkie Collins. Its his second book, published in 1852. I was able to get this copy printed on-demand through Amazon. Im going to talk about some of the plot, but Ill try not to give too much away.The main character is naïve Basil, who is a passive soul through the bulk of this book until he realizes hes been scammed. Hes easily taken advantage of and this can be a little frustrating for the reader, but I wanted to keep

I really enjoyed this engaging novel by Wilkie Collins, which was my second Collins novel! The novel addresses various themes and points, such as father- child relationship, class distinction, gender, communication vs poor communication, the important role of family in one's life, appearance vs. reality, greed, revenge, the need for support, adultery, and marriage and faithfulness. I loved how Collins showed how the balance of the family as system is affected because of one member of this

This is Collins' first published novel, and it shows. The first half was paced too slowly like the average Victorian author, but the unpredictability and suspense of the second half show more of what Collins' later and better written novels are like. Read The Moonstone or The Woman in White before trying this one.

I do adore Wilkie Collins' writing, but this sad Gothic tale was seriously depressing from start to finish. In this story, the main character Basil sees a young woman in the street, and instantly falls in love with her. He meets her briefly, and learns that her name is Margaret. Later he approaches her father, and the two are married within a couple of weeks with the proviso that Margaret remain living with her family until her 18th birthday. So Basil is married in name only and can only visit

I am now about to relate the story of an error, innocent in its beginning, guilty in its progress, fatal in its results All hail serendipity! I did not know of the existence of Wilkie Collinss novel Basil until a few days ago, when I finished reading William Godwins Caleb Williams, and saw Collinss novel cited as analogous to Godwins in respect of its subject matter. That prompted me to follow it up, and Im very glad I did.The only works by Wilkie Collins I had read before are his great novels