Man and Wife

Written by Wilkie Collins

Narrated by Nicholas Boulton

Published 10 years after Collins’s most popular novel The Woman in White, Man and Wife centres on the confused and inequitable marriage laws of 19th-century Britain, reflecting the author’s own antipathy towards the institution. The plot follows the fortunes of a woman who, committed to marriage with one man, comes to believe that she may have inadvertently married his friend, according to the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. Collins shows himself to be a masterly storyteller, seamlessly moving the action from a country house to a suburb of London, and into a world of deceit and murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
• Release date: May 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781781983737

Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824, the son of a successful and popular painter. Collins himself demonstrated some artistic talent and had a painting hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1849, but his real passion was for writing. On leaving school, he worked in the office of a tea merchant in the Strand but hated it. He left and read law as a student at Lincoln's Inn but already his writing career was flowering. His first novel, Antonina, was published in 1850. In 1851, the same year that he was called to the bar, he met and established a lifelong friendship with Charles Dickens. While Collins' fame rests on his best known works, The Woman in White and The Moonstone, he wrote over thirty books, as well as numerous short stories, articles and plays. He was a hugely popular writer in his lifetime. Collins was an unconventional individual: he never married but established long term liaisons with two separate households. He died in 1889.

Reviews for Man and Wife

[Mariam Shah-Rais · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great plot and engaging book as always by Wilkie Collins multiplied by the brilliant narration of Nicholas Boulton.

[Jan P · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed listening to this long, involved story from Wilkie Collins - narrated by Nicholas Boulton so perfectly. A great dramatic ending as you would expect from Wilkie Collins.