Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T22:52:23.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Wilkie Collins on Music and Musicians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

On 21 November 1853, Charles Dickens wrote to his wife from Florence, complaining about his friend and travelling-companion, fellow novelist Wilkie Collins:

On music too, he is very learned, and sometimes almost drives me into a frenzy by humming and whistling whole overtures -with not one movement correctly remembered from the beginning to the end. I was obliged to ask him, the day before yesterday, to leave off whistling the overture to William Tell. ‘For by Heaven,’ said I, ‘there's something the matter with your ear — it must be the cotton which plays the Devil with the commonest tune.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Basil; A Story of Modern Life (1852); World's Classics, ed. Goldman, Dorothy (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar
Hide and Seek or, The Mystery of Mary Grice (1854); ed. Donaldson, Norman (New York, 1981)Google Scholar
The Dead Secret (1857); (New York, 1979)Google Scholar
The Woman in White (1860); Penguin English Library, ed. Symons, Julian (Harmondsworth, 1974)Google Scholar
No Name (1863); World's Classics, ed. Blain, Virginia (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar
Armadale (1866); Penguin Classics, ed. Sutherland, John (Harmondsworth, 1995)Google Scholar
The Moonstone (1868); Signet Classics, ed. Karl, Frederick R. (New York, 1984)Google Scholar
Man and Wife (1870); World's Classics, ed. Page, Norman (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar
Poor Miss Finch (1872); World's Classics, ed. Peters, Catherine (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar
Miss or Mrs? and Other Stories in Outline (1873); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1993)Google Scholar
The New Magdalen (1873); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1993)Google Scholar
The Frozen Deep and Other Tales (1874); The Frozen Deep and Mr Wray's Cash-Box, Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1996); originally conceived - with Dickens - as a stage play in 1856; this version appears in Under the Management of Mr. Charles Dickens: His Production of ‘The Frozen Deep’, ed. Robert Louis Brannan (Ithaca, NY, 1966)Google Scholar
The Law and the Lady (1875); World's Classics, ed. Taylor, Jennie Bourne (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar
The Fallen Leaves (1879); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1994)Google Scholar
Jezebel's Daughter (1880); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1995)Google Scholar
The Black Robe (1881); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1994)Google Scholar
Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time (1883); Broadview Literary Texts, ed. Farmer, Steve (Toronto, 1996)Google Scholar
I Say No’ (1884); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1998)Google Scholar
The Evil Genius (1886); Broadview Literary Texts, ed. Law, Graham (Toronto, 1994)Google Scholar
The Guilty River (1886); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1991)Google Scholar
The Legacy of Cain (1888); Pocket Classics (Stroud, 1995)Google Scholar