Armadale (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Wilkie Collins

This 1866 novel tells of two men who share a name and a tragic, violent history.  The father of one murdered the father of the other; now the two sons seem fated by destiny—or the machinations of a beautiful but evil woman—to repeat this deadly history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Jul 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411458772

Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and more than 100 essays. His best-known works are The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

Reviews for Armadale (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[mumoftheanimals · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was amazed how much I enjoyed this book. It had twist after twist.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Armadale, Wilkie Collins’s longest novel and like another of his popular novels, The Moonstone, the narrative comprises a series of testimonies and accounts (such as from characters’ diaries and letters) which gradually shed light on the mystery. One interesting note: the heading of Chapter VII is "The Plot Thickens". I do not know if that was the first use of that phrase (I doubt it) but it is striking that Collins would use it for a chapter heading.In 1832, Allan Armadale confesses on his deathbed to murder: his clerk, Fergus Ingleby, stole his name and married Jane Blanchard, the woman Allan loved. Pursuing the couple on board a ship, Allan locked Fergus in a cabin and left him to drown when the ship was wrecked. Allan later travelled to the West Indies where he married a creole woman and had a son.After this opening the story moves to 1851, and the murderer’s son has adopted the name Ozias Midwinter, while the drowned Fergus Ingleby’s has been brought up under the name Allan Armadale – and with it, has inherited Fergus’ property, the estate of Thorpe Ambrose. Ozias learns the truth about his father’s crime – that he murdered his friend’s father – while on a sailing trip with Fergus and Jane’s son, Allan Armadale. He destroys the letter containing Allan Armadale Senior’s confession, and vows to keep the secret from his friend.Lydia Gwilt, the former maid to Jane Blanchard (Allan’s father), sets her sights on marrying Allan for his money. Both Ozias Midwinter and Allan Armadale end up falling for Lydia, but her plan to marry Armadale is scuppered when her cynical motives are uncovered. However the resourceful Lydia, having learned the secret that Midwinter’s real name is also Allan Armadale, plans to marry him under his real name, get the other Allan Armadale out of the way, and then use the marriage certificate as legal proof of her entitlement to the Armadale estate. This complex plot continues as Lydia marries Midwinter, concealing her checkered past from him but the denouement will have to await your reading pleasure for this reader must vow not to spoil that delight.Armadale is unusual among Wilkie Collins’s sensation novels because it demonstrates a detailed interest in human psychology, with dreams cropping up at numerous points in the novel, and Collins taking time to explore what John Sutherland, in The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, calls ‘the psychology of crime’. Granted, the dreams are used as plot devices rather than as a sort of proto-stream-of-consciousness designed to shed light on Allan Armadale’s character; but Collins’s use of the dreams, and Midwinter’s analysis of their significance as premonitions, adds another psychological layer to this complex novel. The real triumph of Armadale is Collins’s portrayal of Lydia Gwilt, whose surname suggests ‘guilt’ (and ‘gilt’, evoking her gold-digging ambitions), but also, through a twist, ‘will’, foregrounding her own independent agency and, it must be said, her perseverance and cunning. This is a great read which I would recommend to lovers of Dickens or Thackeray.

[pgchuis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Extremely convoluted plot. Two men with the same name who become friends despite the fact that one of their fathers murdered the other; an amoral femme fatale who entrances literally every man she comes across; villainous villains and a gullible hero. Very enjoyable, although very long and requiring lots of suspension of disbelief. I couldn't quite work out why Midwinter lost interest in Lydia only two weeks after marrying her and I found the narrative of the Dream so boring that I skipped over it, which was perhaps not the best thing to have done.Definitely "Victorian" in its emotions and attitudes and interesting in its depiction of Victorian laws surrounding marriage.Fun.

[laugal-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love Collins character development,writing style and storylines. That said,this book had sections that were so long and dragged out that it made the climatic parts anti-climatic...for me.You cannot skim thru parts of Collins books,you will lose important details for the story. I liked the story,I just felt this could have been a bit shorter in length.Not as good as The Woman in White,but a good mystery.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first Wilkie Collins novel I read was The Moonstone, and I loved it so much that I devoured it practically in one sitting, while at home nursing a cold. Then I picked up The Woman in White, and, to my surprise, found it almost unbearably slow and tedious. Suddenly uncertain about a writer I'd thought I loved, I figured I'd let Armadale be my tie-breaker.... and I'm very pleased to report that the results were entirely in Mr. Collins' favor.The plot of this one is almost impossible to describe in any concise or reasonable-sounding way. Suffice it to say that it involves secrets, murders, assumed identities, an inheritance, a scheming gold digger, a prophetic dream, and no fewer than four different people named "Allan Armadale." Among other things. It's all pretty entertaining, with moments of humor and moments of tragedy and moments of suspense. One thing I find interesting about it is how, like most novels of this sort, it's full of a million ridiculously implausible coincidences, but it actually manages to turn that from a bug into a feature, creating an ominous sense of inescapable fate closing in. The characters, for the most part, are well-rendered and interesting -- especially the main villain, a manipulative, spiteful woman whom one might almost expect to be cartoony, but who instead feels extremely human, even sympathetic. All of which isn't to say that it's flawless. It is somewhat slow-paced and rambly, although, really, if you sit down to a 650-page Victorian novel expecting something zippy, you're probably asking for disappointment. And there were a few places where I found myself kind of wanting to grab some of the characters and shake them until they talked to each other, or where they seemed not to react quite the way I would expect based on things that had been previously established, leading me to wonder if maybe Collins' convoluted plot might just be getting away with him a bit.But mostly it was really enjoyable. Which leaves me wondering just what, exactly, my problem was with The Woman in White, since it's basically the same type of story as Armadale and The Moonstone, and did feature some good characters. Maybe I was just not in the right mood, or went into it with my expectations set too high. In any case, I'm glad I didn't let it put me off.

[tarklovishki · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Armadale strikes me as the kind of book that you have to get interested in during the first fifty to a hundred pages to fully enjoy all the way through. For me, I did not find much interest in it. There was nothing overall wrong with it; I just found it boring.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Probably deserves a better rating but my mom had heart surgery whilst I was reading this & it couldn't hold my attention.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A dying man's warning creates the tension in this Victorian sensation novel. Allan Armadale has taken the name as a condition of inheritance of the Armadale estate in the West Indies because the natural heir of that name was considered unfit by his father. The two Allan Armadales of that generation eventually confront each other, with fatal consequences for one. Both leave sons and namesakes at their death. The son of the Allan Armadale of the West Indies is of mixed race since his mother was of African descent. With his last breath, the West Indian Allan Armadale leaves a warning for his son to avoid the other Allan Armadale and the woman who, as a 12-year-old girl, aided in a cruel deception. Before receiving his father's warning at his coming of age, the son, under an assumed name, meets the other Allan Armadale and they become the best of friends. He spends the rest of the novel wrestling with his conscience and his fear as his father's warnings and his premonitions of danger come true.Parts of this novel are suspenseful and parts are even humorous. However, some of the devices Collins uses don't work well. Large sections of the novel use the diary of one of the characters to reveal her thoughts, background, and intentions. It's basically an information dump. If Collins had figured out any other way to convey that information to readers, the book would have been better. Collin's treatment of race is a mixed bag. Race wasn't an impediment to friendship or marriage for the mixed race Allan Armadale. However, he is superstitious regarding dreams and premonitions, and he has difficulty controlling his emotions. Collins uses words like “savage” and “violent” to describe his emotional state. (Although to be fair, other characters also have their emotional state described as “violent” within the novel.) While I enjoyed this book, it will never be one of my favorites among Collins' novels, and I doubt I'll ever read it again.

[judith.flanders · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tracing how real-life Victorian murders were reimagined for entertainment purposes—detective fiction, theater, even puppet shows—gave me the enjoyable task of reading hundreds of novels, some classics, some good, some terrible. I had always skipped “Armadale.” It is the story of two cousins, both named Allan Armadale and both in love with the evil Miss Gwilt. She marries the poor Allan, planning to murder the rich one so that, as the legal Mrs. Allan Armadale, she can inherit his money. The book is much better than this summary makes it sound, once you get past the trauma of all the Allan Armadales running about. Collins used the 1857 case of Madeleine Smith, who was tried for poisoning her lover in Glasgow, as a jumping-off point. Today, however, it is Collins’s fiendishly clever plotting that keeps us turning the pages, as does his then-novel combination of crime and domesticity. Today the “body in the library” is shorthand for murders in domestic settings, but Collins was among the first (and best) at making the familiar seem strange, the suburban sinister.

[bookishkirsten · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My favourite Victorian sensationalist novel - full of melodramatic twists but also a thoughtful exporation of the nature of heredity and destiny. Very much a book for lovers of the genre - it can be a bit slow at times.

[atimco-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Armadale, considered one of Wilkie Collins's four greatest novels, he explores his favorite themes of the supernatural, destiny, murder, tortured love, revenge, deceit, and addiction. It's a complicated tale that relies heavily on coincidence, as is usual in sensational novels of the period. By an extraordinary set of circumstances too convoluted to detail here, there are two young men with the same name of "Allan Armadale," and their lives are linked (unbeknown to them) by murder and revenge in their parents' generation. One Allan Armadale is fortune's favorite, rich and handsome, while the other has had a life of unusual privation and suffering. Who can explain why their destinies are so inextricably entwined? And who casts the shadow of the Woman over them both?Usually I love Wilkie and find his Victorian thrillers still wonderfully thrilling today. His writing is fairly good (I loved a phrase he uses in this novel, "the sexual sorcery of her smile"), and his melodrama, punctuated by moments of both humor and pathos, is of the entertaining variety. And he has a real gift for carrying his stories along with different narrative voices. Some of this novel is narrated by Lydia Gwilt in letters and diary entries; some is told in the omniscient third-person narrative style; and other tidbits of letters and notes from other characters give us insight into their motives and goals. But this time I found the supernatural elements and the characters' overwrought responses to those elements—dare I say it?—the slightest bit tiresome. I wanted to tell the characters that it wasn't inevitable, they didn't have to live out the fearsome warnings of the Dream, that they should rebel against their own genre and be sensible, stolid Victorians. I suppose this still means that Collins has triumphed, as I was engaged with the characters and cared about what happened to them. But I wonder if his use of ominous supernatural signs is overdone, or if I am simply losing interest in it. His characters, however, are memorable. Lydia Gwilt reminds me of Austen's Lady Susan and Collins's own Count Fosco. Lydia loves music and plays the piano beautifully, often losing herself in Mozart... but she is harshly practical at her core. The reader senses he cannot trust her, but she fluctuates throughout the novel, believing herself to be entirely without a heart and then weakening, weakening under the affection of a singular man. We hope she will reform (and stay reformed), but we know that this is a Wilkie Collins novel, after all, and he has to get in his share of angst before a few of the characters are permitted to enjoy happy endings. Armadale is one of Collins's least humorous novels and there is a sense of oppression—suppression?—pervading its atmosphere. There is a sort of black humor in Mr. Bashwood's elderly vanity (that Collins says is really despair) and Mother Oldershaw's canting conversion to Christianity, but it isn't the sort to make you laugh. No indeed. I suppose Pedgift (and Pedgift;s Postscript) is funny, as is the description of the disastrous picnic. But these little moments are overshadowed by the larger themes. But despite the lack of light comedic moments, I agree with T. S. Eliot, quoted on the back of my copy, who wrote that this novel is never dull. For all its length (and it's over 650 pages of small type), it never bored me and I was always eager to pick it up again. And that's why I keep reading Wilkie Collins, melodrama and all. Master storytellers have that effect.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great winter read. Full of unbelievable co-incidences (although the Appendix puts those into a new light) and Miss Gwilt is just unbelievably irredeemable, but if you can suspend disbelief and worries about Collins's misogyny, this is a good, thick book to take you through the long, dark evenings. Now looking forward to reading the introduction!

[zolasdisciple · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is book is amazing. Its faced paced almost supernatural action is spellbinding. Wilkie colins solidified his place as one of the best riters ever with his consistent smooth plots and engaging characters.Perfection.

[seajack_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Those Victorian serialists were sure good at plotting (drawing things out)! I wasn't thrilled with the ending, but the characters held my intertest - esp the co-villainess "Mother" Oldershawe.

[mcgooglykins_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I suspect Collins was high when he wrote this. Four characters, one name. Long, convoluted, dragging, and in the end, a fairly pointless story.

[tibbysbrain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the characteristic Collins style fate and the hint of the supernatural bring the two heroes together in this story. Ozias Midwinter is a rambling gypsy. Allen Armadale is a good natured man raised by his mother in a small fishing village. When the two meet Aramadale is quite taken with Ozias and insists on cultivating a friendship. Midwinter has a secret identity that he feels should prevent them from being friends, but his own devotion to Aramadale makes it difficult for him to resist. Ozias knows that at some point they will need to part to prevent the ruin of Aramadale that would come at the revelation of Ozias' secret. Collins also highlights the inequality of men and women's places in the Victorian era. The main female figure is a widow tainted by her past and no proper way of supporting herself. Like Becky Sharpe of Vanity Fair, she wishes to have a better life and must sacrifice her morals in order to do so. Her plan is thrown for a loop when she falls in love with Midwinter and calls into question her own behavior. Unfortunately, old habits die hard and the scars from her earlier life prove too deep to allow for a complete transformation. Unlike Becky, however, she finally comes to the realization that her love for Midwinter is far more important than her own life however worthless it may feel and dies in his place. This is quite the piece of fiction and Collins proves to be very forward thinking when thrusting the spotlight onto the problems Victorian society created for many of its women.

[carealotsclouds · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

No, this is not as good as 'The Woman In White' or 'The Moonstone'. The pace and the style of writing is really quite different (Collins was immensely ill whilst writing this book). There is something lacking in this novel that the other three big novels of Collins had plenty of. Armadale is not as mysterious as the other novels. The only real secret kept from the reader until the end is the truth of Lydia Gwilt's past. This secret of her past is not something that I craved or cared that much about, all I cared about is what she was going to do next which she always clearly spells out what she is going to do, pages or chapters before she does it. All this said, it is still a fantastic read. It took me a long time to get through because this novel seems to be split in two, and the first part is quite tedious. Midwinter is an admirable character, but Mr Armadale is extremely annoying, and Midwinter, in turn, for caring so much for him is quite annoying. As a reader I was really willing Miss Gwilt on, and agreed with her on every count of Allan Armadale's character. The pair that consists of Armadale and Midwinter somewhat mirrors the pair of Marian Halcombe and Laura Fairlie from 'The Woman In White' where one is incredibly strong and the other is weak, needing constant care and attention from the stronger of the pair. The first part of the novel focuses on their relationship and foreshadowing dreams. Even Midwinter's character becomes a bore when he obsesses over fate and destiny. The second half the novel consists mainly of Lydia Gwilt's point of view whilst being introduced to new characters way of thinking, such as Mr Bashwood and Mrs Milroy. The novel picks up here and becomes a lot more interesting. There are a few instances when we think we know where the story is going, but then takes a different way completely. She gains our sympathy as she tries as hard as she can to be moral and honest, only to find her efforts useless and forced back into her old ways. This is worth a read, and some think this book is better than the more popular TWIW and TM, but I don't think so. The pacing is uneven, and some things are just too overly detailed and obvious. I was oddly dissatisfied when I had finished reading it though the character of Lydia Gwilt is a genius one. I'd advise to give this book a go, and to hold out until Lydia arrives on to the scene. On a more thematic note, there is a lot in this novel (as with his other novels) about identity, the role of women, technology, geography, money and alienation. And where would a classic Collins novel be without opium?!

[wanderlust_lost · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wikie Collin's "Armadale" is a story of fate, folly, and le femme fatale. This Victorian sensation novel follows the lives of distant cousins Allan Armadale and Allan Armadale (alias Ozias Midwinter) the sons of two other Allan Armadales, one the victim of the other's murderous rage over the love of a woman. When Allan Armadale Sr. (the murderer) dies he writes, on his deathbed, a confession to his son (Midwinter) about the terrible crime he visited on his namesake and the horrible fate that he fears will befall his son should he and the son of the other Armadale ever meet.21 years after this terrible confession was put to paper Midwinter and Armadale the younger meet and become best friends only for Midwinter to then receive his father's letter and learn the horrible truth of their families' pasts. Frightened that the sins of the father should be visited on the son and that he, Midwinter, should be the unwitting driving force behind the demise of the second Armadale Midwinter enters on a path of tortured self-denial, unaware that the very fear of fulfilling this prophecy is driving him closer and closer to its culmination.Meanwhile the flame-haired temptress Lydia Gwilt arrives on the scene. Complicit in the scandal that robbed Midwinter's father of his betrothed and ended in the death of Armadale's father Miss Gwilt feels that the Armadale family owes her a debt for the years she suffered in privation and disgrace. But Miss Gwilt's past dishonour is nobody's fault but her own, and her own evil nature, driven to murder once before, is now bent on murder again in order to gain the Armadale fortune. Oblivious to Miss Gwilt's murderous designs on his friend Midwinter falls hopelessly in love with her. Will this love for the very woman who is plotting to kill his friend ultimately result in the fulfillment of the prophecy and leave Midwinter responsbile for Armadale's death? Or will his love for Miss Gwilt somehow save his best friend from her terrible claws?This novel is, perhaps, Collins's best. Though not as well known as "The Woman in White" and lacking a terrific Fosco-like villain, the intricate plot, and the tragic heroine/villainess make it more believable and more moving. This is a deeply saddening book, but also a triumph in literary style. For fans of Collins or Victorian literatuer in general I could not recommend this book more highly.

[eloise_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wilkie Collins is probably my favourite writer and this is the best one I've read so far, better in my opinion than the Moonstone or Woman in White which get more attention. Lydia Gwilt is a marvellous anti-heroine. Villified when the book was published, to my modern eyes she is more sympathetic. She is conniving and selfish, certainly, but also seems quite sad and lost. Collins encourages this sympathy by writing a section of it in her voice, so you get into her head and understand her motivations and mixed-up emotions. I could not put this down, read the whole thing in a day and suffered severe eye-strain as a result!