A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins
162 pages
Published 1856 (as weekly serial in Household Words), 1879 (as slightly revised novella)
Read February 20
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
This
is my first exposure to Collins. In fact, when I picked this novella
off the shelf, I'd never heard of him, and had no idea who he was. As
such, I'm in no position to evaluate his modern reputation, though I'm
guessing he's one of the more prominent Victorian writers who
nevertheless have slipped through the cracks of time, denied the cheap
and plentiful mass paperback editions and middle school curricula that
sustain other "classic" authors. This impression is nurtured by the
somewhat tawdry edition stocked by my library, which looks for all the
world like a small press imprint of some local writer's pirate fiction,
or worse, some tacky evangelical tract. Have a look.
I was somewhat self-conscious reading it in public. Perhaps Hesperus
Press spent their entire design budget snagging a perfunctory
introduction from none other than Peter Ackroyd. (Though apparently
Ackroyd wrote a biography of Collins, which makes the connection rather
less random.) Wikipedia tells me Collins penned the first English
language detective novel, though, and several movies have been made
based on his works, so maybe I'm just completely out of the loop. (I
am.)
A Rogue's Life is a charming picaresque tale,
hilariously dry, cynical, and ironic in the best Victorian mode. In that
respect it's nothing unique or remarkable, merely a winsome (and short)
example of a well-populated genre. But it's a style I love, so it was
well worth the two or three hours it took me to read it. I have to
admit, despite all that, it bogged down quite a bit in the middle with a
fairly rote recitation of love first thwarted, then won -- an
inevitability, perhaps, given the time period, but enough to diminish my
overall satisfaction with the book.
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